The Secret Life Of The Titanic
by Princess Pinky
Summary: Richard Underwood and Adrian Lee, each hailing from vastly different social backgrounds, are drawn together by fate on the tragic maiden voyage of the RMS Titanic.
1. Prologue

**A/N: **First things first. I have to say that this story idea was inspired by a story I read well over a year ago in the _One Tree Hill_ section, called _Titanic_. It's a Naley story which pretty much follows the movie. Anyway, it hasn't been updated since December 2010 and I had asked if I might have the original author's blessing to do my own SL version back in June of this year, but I suspect the story is abandoned (she hasn't updated _any_ of her stories since December 24, 2010), because I never heard back and the story was never updated. If you want to check out the Naley story, it's by **rachel2502**. So I'm going to proceed anyway. But as I said, this was inspired by her story, with a big alternative take on the idea, which you'll see immediately. However, if she were to decide to come back to her FFN account and ask me to take down my story, I am perfectly willing to do so, since it was inspired by her idea. Oh, and one other thing, don't get too excited. I seriously should not be posting it, because I have no idea when I will be able to will finish it, but it's just sitting around on my laptop, so I opted to post the prologue.

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Prologue**

The people came in droves that day: rich and poor, better and worse, sick and healthy. There was an energy in the air, like standing in a downpour with a backdrop of thunder and the threat of lightning sparking at the hairs on the back of your neck. The lacquer had bred with the ocean air, producing an intoxicatingly vulgar tang that burned his throat on the way down to his lungs the moment the door opened.

Richard Underwood lifted his head to in the direction of the sun which backlit the ship docked before him. It almost looked magical, outlined in the ethereal solar light, like a portrait of the Virgin Mary. And the stark size came as a surprise, bigger than even his dreams had ever been. He was momentarily taken aback, until a gloved hand dangled out in front of his view.

"Aren't you going to assist me?"

The sultry yet demanding voice tore his thoughts away from the ship and all he could see was the white satin waving before his eyes. He adjusted a robotic half smile and took the hand in a dutiful manner and offered his services, helping the wavy haired brunette to which the hand belonged from her seat. "My apologies."

"Forgive him, Zoe," Robert Underwood spoke as he too stepped out. "Such an exciting day, isn't it, son?" He motioned grandiosely towards their sea bound destination. "It's hard not to get taken out of the moment."

Richard cringed as his father's hand landed on his shoulder. "Sure," he hissed, quickly slipping to the wayside.

"It is brilliant," Zoe agreed, her icicle eyes catching the natural light and gleaming as she wrapped herself around Richard's arm. The diamond on the European cut art deco ring that rested on her finger cast a rainbow onto her fiancé's cheek as she pushed him through the crowd towards the first class boarding ramp. "They say it's called The Ship of Dreams."

Richard crossly shook his head. "Isn't the latest obsession always someone's dream come true?"

Zoe bit back a sour expression and persistently continued, "They say it's unlike any other ship that's ever been created before: they say it's _unsinkable_."

"It should fly for the expense of the tickets."

"Expense is no obstacle for us, is it, Richard?" Zoe curled her arm around his lower back as they made their way to the railing.

Richard perked up, standing ramrod straight in an attempt to evade the slithering arm. His eyes turned to the churning crowd on the dock, all of whom were looking to the Titanic and its precious cargo with baited breath. He couldn't help but be envious of each and every one of them. All the money in the world couldn't give him what they had and not one of them knew it: he'd happily trade places in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, lost in the cornfield of onlookers, two young women gripped hands as they burrowed through the throng, each sweating and out of breath, but deadly determined to make their appointment.

"If you hadn't spent so long on your hair!" the black haired friend chided playfully.

"Oh, shove it, Adrian!" the blonde called back, her gray eyes grinning. "I would've been ready if you'd told me sooner!"

Adrian grasped the railing, pressing her whole body weight into it as they came upon the third class boarding ramp. Her lungs were screaming for a timeout and her legs seemed to be taking their side. She heaved in the dewy oxygen as her friend trotted up to the man checking tickets and supplied him with their passes. When she saw the blonde wave her on from the corner of her eye, she pushed herself up and skipped over the threshold, where she paused again, this time to take in the polished smell of the newly christened cruise liner.

"I can't believe I'm actually standing on the Titanic!" She turned to Adrian with the most ridiculous grin on her face and began to jump up and down. "Adrian, we're standing on _The Titanic!_"

"Grace." Adrian shook her head, still wheezing a bit from all the exertion. She managed a cheeky smile. "What would I do without you?"

"Be standing here with some miserable bloke," she joked. She suddenly threw her arms around her friend. "I still can't believe our luck! Your dad's got to be the worst poker player in the world and yet he just happen to win two tickets with a lucky hand three hours before this ship was about to take off. That's what I call God's hand!"

"You would." The Latina threw one arm over her friend's shoulders. "Godspeed me to the cabin, would you? I think I'm going to die."

"You can't! We've got to get to the deck, don't you want to wave to everyone down before as we take off? That's something you'll regret if you don't."

"Oh," she groaned, leaning her head against Grace's shoulder. "Fine. Tug me along then."

"Thank you!" the blonde squealed. She chattered on for a good two minutes and forty-something seconds until they finally managed to push their way to the top of the ship and squeeze their way over to the railing.

The crowd was deafening in Adrian's ears, surely four or five times as loud as it had been on the deck. She couldn't be sure if the people on the boat were just more raucous or if the crowd had actually grown inside over the blip of time they'd been onboard. Either way, Grace was right: they_ had_ to be there. She'd never been so high on anything in her life, but right then, life was getting the best of her. Adrian raised her hand high towards the aquamarine sky and blew it back and forth in the direction of the crowd while Grace hooped and hollered beside her.

"This is the best day of my life!"

The ship groaned beneath her feet as it began to pull away from the dock. The sensation was foreign under her feet and she had to grasp the railing for support. Her stomach lurched: she had never been on a boat before and suddenly she perfectly understood her father's inability to board the boat himself. "I'm not going to get sick, I'm not going to get sick," she sung under her breath, focusing her energies on the moving masses that were getting further and further away from her.

Defiantly, she raised one arm from the railing and began to swing it again, pushing her seasickness to the farthest nether regions of her mind. The maiden voyage of The Ship of Dreams was something that was once in a lifetime and there was not a single thing that Adrian Lee was going to allow to mar the memory of April 10, 1912.


	2. Chapter One

**A/N: **When I decided to do the gender swapped roles, essentially making Ricky the "Rose" of the story and Adrian the "Jack," I never realized how difficult some of the key alternate scenes would be, so I had to get kind of creative about it in this chapter. Enjoy!

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter One**

He could imagine himself getting lost in the waves; sinking beneath the Atlantic foam, buried in a place where his father could never find him again. Not that he wanted to drown, though. That thought scared the hell out of him. The idea of knowing for several minutes that you were dying, and all the while suffering, was something he didn't want. Quick and easy was his style. As a child he'd spent years alone in his bed, wishing the night would take him as he slept. But alas, he had not been so fortunate.

Richard fingered the satin bowtie at his throat and then slid his fingers down his chest, into the inner flap of his suit. When he pulled them back out, his hand was clamped so tight his knuckles were as white as the water churning from the back of the Titanic. He turned his hand over and unwound his fingers, revealing a miniature gun, with a pearl grip and a sterling silver trigger. He tossed the gun between his palms, relishing the hot metal – warmed from pressing against his chest all night – against his cool skin.

Several minutes passed and Richard still found himself alone. He'd excused himself from dinner by complaining of sea sickness, knowing that nobody in his party would bother to follow him out and thus give up valuable food or socialization just to see if he was alright. He leisurely lifted the mouth of the gun to his head and pressed it to his left temple, gauging the feel of the metal. He tossed the gun to his other hand and then pressed it to the right temple, trying to decide the most comfortable angle.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

Richard paused, without taking the gun away from his head. He didn't turn around to see who the voice belonged to, but he knew it was female, and certainly not a voice he'd known before. "Well you're not me, are you?"

"Come on, what can a pretty white boy like you possibly have to be so upset about that he wants to off himself on the maiden voyage of The Ship of Dreams? The fact that I even have to ask that is ridiculous."

Richard used his left hand to grab the railing; it was frigid to the touch, but he didn't pull it back. He mused over the words 'pretty white boy' before finally turning around, his finger still on the trigger. Standing across the deck was a plain clothed young woman, roughly about his age, with shiny black hair and olive skin. "Steerage, aren't you?" he bit back, judging by her clothing and skin color. "What are you even doing up here?"

"Doing what steerage does best," she sniped, crossing her arms. "Sneaking into places we shouldn't, like the vermin we are." She tossed her black hair over her shoulder. "On second thought, why don't you just get it over with, yeah?" She mimed a gun with her fingers and aimed it at her head, before making popping noises with her puckered lips. "That way I can pilfer what's left from your corpse and sell it to buy booze and use it to escape my lowly existence."

His finger fell from the trigger and he eased up the pressure of the pistol against his temple. "What's your name?"

"What's it to you?"

"Curiosity's all."

She sauntered closer, looking him up and down. "Yours first, _Sir_." The last word spilled out contemptuously.

"Richard."

"Richard…" She stuck out her lower lip and simultaneously shook her head. "…what?"

"Underwood."

"_Ahhh…"_ She clicked her tongue to the roof up of her mouth and lazily extended her hand to him. "Lee."

"Lee?" Richard shifted his eyes suspiciously between her hand and her face. "What do you think you're doing, _Lee_?"

"Isn't this how _your people_ greet each other?" she spat. "With a kiss on the hand? Or is _steerage _exempt?"

Richard narrowed his eyes, then released his free hand from the railing and slid it beneath the Latina's, before raising the back of her hand to his lips and kissing it tenderly. His lips tingled against her skin, which, for a low class passenger, was much softer than he expected.

As his lips pulled away from the back of her hand, she suddenly drew it away, backhanding Richard from the chin, diagonally across his face. The pistol went flying from his hand and skidded across the deck as its owner lost his balance and stumbled onto his ass, against the railing. The Latina jogged over to the pistol and picked it up, before aiming it at Richard. "That would be _Adrian_ Lee, for the record."

Richard could feel the heat from the slap radiating off his face. From experience, he knew it was probably turning a hot tomato color. As that occurred to him, he also began to taste a salty flavor in his mouth and instinctively touched his lip, which he found to be bleeding; bit, when Adrian had backhanded him. "How much do you want?" he sighed.

Adrian scoffed and waved his gun. "Stand up."

"Just shoot me if you're going to. It's nothing I wasn't going to do."

"How about I blow your knees out? Or put a hole in your foot? I strongly suspect you didn't want to suffer, otherwise you wouldn't have had this aimed at your skull."

Richard grunted and pulled himself into a standing position, using the railing for support. "What do you want?" he asked again.

Adrian edged over to him, keeping him at bay with the pistol. "My brother used to have one like this." She dropped the gun into her other hand and admired it. "Half-brother, actually, on my pop's side; my dad's first wife, second kid." She rolled her eyes. "I was the bastard baby. His mom came from money though, married him before my mother and her family ever told him I existed. But she died in childbirth and he and my dad never got along. He offed himself about five years back, his mother's family blamed my dad, and they kicked him out and took back their family fortune. My parents happened to reconnect a little over a year later, that's when I first met him, and I didn't even know I had a brother until he told me last year, in the midst of a real drunken stupor. I never could understand it, how a rich kid could be so unhappy. You've got everything you could possibly want, so…why do you want to die?"

"Well when you have everything, what else is there?"

"Wrong answer." Adrian pointed the pistol at the ocean and fired a single shot into the water. Afterwards, she placed the gun to her lips and inhaled the scent from the pistol. "Always did love the smell of a freshly fired rifle. You know, if my dad had been born with your skin, he might have been an officer of the law. Too bad, right Ricky?"

"Richard."

Adrian shrugged. "Formalities. You upper class and your regal sounding names; I don't understand it."

"Richard?"

Adrian and Richard both turned at the unexpected voice. It was male and laced with a faint Italian accent. Across the deck, near where Adrian had been standing when she found Richard, they saw a rotund man in a black tux, with a wary look on his face.

"Is there a problem here?" he said slowly, deliberately. His eyes were on Adrian, and more specifically, the gun she held in her hands, pointed at Richard. "I'm sure whatever it is-"

"Mr. Boykewich!" Richard interjected, shaking his head. "No problem." He smiled jovially and grasped Adrian's wrist with one of his hands. "I was just showing Miss Lee how to shoot."

Mr. Boykewich perked a brow. "Is that so?" he inched closer, looking between the pair suspiciously.

"Leo Boykewich, Adrian Lee. Adrian Lee, Leo Boykewich," Richard introduced, waving his hands between the two. "I thought some fresh air might help my upset stomach," he lied. "So I took a stroll out on deck. That's how we ran into each other. We started talking and…and she told me about a pistol her brother used to own, so I showed her mine and…"

"He offered to teach me how to shoot it." She feigned innocence. "My dad never let me near guns as a child…always the ever protective father."

Leo nodded quietly. "I see." He licked his lips. "Carry on then," he nodded, retrieving a cigar from his inner pocket. "Don't mind me."

Adrian and Richard exchanged looks, then Richard slipped behind Adrian and slid his hands up the length of her arms, before adjusting them around her hands. He leaned his face into her shoulder and whispered through her hair, "Just play along." He adjusted her arms into the correct shooting position, then placed his index finger over hers, curved around the trigger. "Now raise your arm like so and-"

Adrian pulled back on the trigger. There was a faint kickback which jutted her hand against Richard's. "I think I got this," she whispered back, smugly confident. "Too bad I don't have anything for target practice."

This time Richard pulled the trigger shooting off another bullet into the water. Despite the darkness, he could see the faint splash of where the bullet had hit. Without thinking about it, he allowed one of his hands to drop from Adrian's arm to her waist, where he rested it upon her hip.

"Don't get ahead of yourself, First Class." Adrian fired off the gun twice more, but when she tried a third time, it popped. Just to be sure, she pulled back the trigger a second and third time, and was only rewarded with pops. Satisfied that the chamber was empty, she eased herself out of Richard's grasp and gave a friendly wave towards Leo. "Wonderful teacher, this one."

Leo nodded. "He's a good boy," he agreed.

"Richard!"

Adrian whipped her head around at the shrill feminine voice, only to see Zoe approaching. She raised her eyebrows at Richard as the brunette's emerald satin heels clacked against the wooden dock. Her eyes spotted the diamond on the woman's hand immediately and she scoffed beneath her breath as Zoe threw her arms around Richard's neck.

"I thought you were going back to your room. What are you doing out here?" She peered at Adrian from the corner of her eye. "It's too cold out here, you're liable to catch a disease."

Richard shifted uncomfortably as Zoe clung to him. He could see his father and a select group of other first class passengers from his dinner party also approaching, no doubt for a smoke before they returned to their cabins, and he exhaled softly. "Right, of course." He bowed lightly to Adrian, much to Zoe's disgust, and nodded gentlemanly towards Leo. "Until next time."

"Evening, Richard!" Leo tipped his hat as Zoe carted Richard off towards their party.

"It was nice meeting you," Adrian muttered awkwardly. "I should probably get going as well, my friend's waiting on me." As she turned to leave, she felt Leo's hand on her arm.

"Thank you," he said as she turned back.

"For what?"

Leo looked back at Richard as he was pulled back into the Titanic with his party. He nodded. "I think we both know the answer to that."

Adrian felt her breath catch in the back of her throat. "I don't know what you're talking about," she said finally, and broke away before releasing a puff of white breath into the cold Atlantic air. She couldn't see Richard or the people he'd been with anymore and she had no intention of turning back to look at Leo. Her stomach felt heavy, as if she'd eaten too much, despite the fact that she hadn't had a thing to eat since some grits and biscuits at breakfast. It growled beneath her clothes and began to churn as she thought about Richard and the situation she'd just prevented. He was unhappy, that much was clear. "And I won't be there next time…"


	3. Chapter Two

**A/N: **I had a bit of a writer's block with this chapter, but hopefully it didn't come out as horrible as it could have.

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Two**

"Can you imagine it? The honest-to-God Statue of Liberty! Larger than life! I can't wait to see it, Adrian!" Grace bounced between the balls of her feet, leaning so far over the railing that Adrian nearly feared for the blonde's safety. "It's going to be brilliant!"

"You say that about everything."

"But this time I really mean it! It's New York, Adrian! This still feels like a dream to me." Her angelic smile turned to a sullen frown. "What's eating you, anyway? You haven't been your normal self all day. First you get in late last night and then – and then…" Grace lifted her finger and pointed it accusingly. "Wait a minute, _you_ got in late last night. Did you _meet_-"

"It's not like _that_, Grace!"

"Oh good Lord, you did! Tell me!"

Adrian grunted. "Not now."

"Yes now! Now. Now. Now! C'mon, Adrian!"

Adrian seized the blonde by the arm and tugged her down the deck, until they were near a bare spot of the deck. "There's nothing much to tell, because it's not what you think."

"And what is that supposed to mean?"

"A guy. A gun. And me. Okay?"

"_Adrian!"_

"He was suicidal, Grace," Adrian sneered beneath her breath. "I literally slapped some sense into him. At least for the night."

Grace chewed her lip thoughtfully. "It sounds like you were right where God wanted you to be."

Adrian rolled her chocolate eyes. "Something like that. Anyway, it's over and done with now. It's in 'God's hands,' as you like to say. He was a first class rich kid, so it's not like I'll ever see him again anyway." She averted her attention to the ocean. The sky was clear and a few birds were flying overhead, just silhouettes in the distance.

"He doesn't happen to have a thick head of brown hair and a sensual swagger, does he?"

"Why would you ask that?"

Grace shrugged nonchalantly. "No particular reason, other than a man with that description and a very expensive suit is walking our way and that's never happened before."

Adrian whirled on her heel to see Richard approaching and unconsciously straightened her posture. "Did I steal something from you or did you just get lost on your way to first class?" She ignored Grace's jab to the gut.

"I was hoping to run into you," Richard replied breathlessly. "I've been looking for you all day."

"Really?" Adrian's eyes washed over Richard skeptically. "And why would that be?" She felt Grace nudge her again.

"I just…" Richard eyed Grace. "Wanted to thank you for last night."

"Shooting lessons," Adrian said to Grace, for Richard's benefit. "And…it was nothing." When Grace elbowed her a third time, she exhaled and waved her hand impatiently. "Grace, this is Ricky Underwood. Ricky, Grace Bowman." To Grace she mouthed, 'Happy now?'

"You must've made quite the impression on one another," Grace piped up. "And it's lovely to meet you, Mr. Underwood."

"Richard, please." Richard slipped his hand around Grace's and gently kissed her hand. "And the pleasure is all mine."

Grace made a cooing noise at the back of her throat and beamed. "Oh, you know what? I just remembered I – I needed to meet Jason." She batted her blonde lashes at Richard and gave her friend a quick hug. "I'll see you later!" She nodded at the brunette. "And perhaps you too."

Adrian shook her head as she watched Grace flounce off below deck. "What are you _really_ doing here?" she deadpanned, once it was just the two of them.

"I really did come to thank you." Richard hung his head. "You caught me in a bad moment last night and I just…thank you."

"Well, you're welcome. Now you can go-"

"Whoa!" He laid his hand on her arm and forced her to look at him. "What have I done to you?"

"Nothing. You're just an arrogant ass."

"You don't know anything about me!"

"I know enough," Adrian spat.

Richard clenched his hand around Adrian's shoulder. "And you call me arrogant!"

The Latina's eyes bulged. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me! You're acting as if just because I have money, it must mean I have the perfect life! That could be anything but the truth!"

"True or not, you still think you're better than I am. 'Steerage,' if I recall. Your words, not mine. As if we're cattle or luggage. You're disgusting!"

"You know what's disgusting?" The veins in his neck were beginning to turn red. "A father who-"

Adrian looked up at him, suddenly interested in the tonal change of his words and appearance. "A father who what?"

Richard grit his teeth so hard they made audible noise, then he broke eye contact. "Never mind. The point is: you know nothing about me and you have no right to judge me."

"_Touché."_

"I'm sorry I even came looking for you. Guess we both misjudged each other."

Adrian gripped the railing as he started to walk off, then grit her teeth, and ran after him. _"Wait!"_ She skid in front of him and pressed her hand to his chest. "Look, I don't say this often, so accept it for what it is: I – I'm sorry. It's just…" She touched her palm to her forehead. "Your behavior, the things you said…it was just all so typical of the things I've had spat in my face my entire life. I guess I don't take them anymore," she sighed. "I just react to them."

"Well, for what it's worth, I'm sorry too." He looked down to his polished shoes, which glistened in contrast to the ratty, puddle stained leather boots Adrian wore. "Sometimes I don't know why I do the things I do. Or end up in the situations I end up in."

"Like with that lady friend of yours?"

Richard growled. "Let's not backtrack," he warned.

Adrian nodded. "Fair enough. So, how did you end up on the Titanic?" she asked, trying to change the subject.

"My father." He picked up the pace of his walk to keep up with Adrian. "You?"

"Mine too. My pop won tickets in a poker match," she grinned. "Gave them to me to take whoever I wanted. Grace was my one and only pick; she's been my only real friend since we were children."

"Must be nice."

"What?"

"Having a friend," Richard said. "One that's _really_ there for you and not just hanging off your every word for your family fortune."

"Is that how you ended up with a gun pointed at your temple?" she asked quietly, her voice suddenly calm, like the deep blue water stretching out around them.

"It was everything," he sighed, moving to the railing and staring out at the vastness of the Atlantic. "It was my whole world and all the people in it; the inertia of my life, plunging ahead, and me, powerless to stop it."

Adrian joined him at the railing. "Well I don't mean to be rude, but how? How aren't you able to stop it? If you don't want to ma – do something, why not just say no? I mean…" She motioned her hand up and down in front of him. "You're a man, which automatically gives you the power to do – or not do – things. That's something we – women, I mean – can't do. And more than that, you're a white man. A _rich_," she emphasized by pinching some of the silken fabric of his tailor made suit between her fingers, "white man at that. Why not just put your foot down?"

Richard pressed his chin to his chest, staring pitifully at the sleek railing. "It's more complicated than you know, Adrian."

"Care to explain?"

Richard closed his eyes. "Not exactly, no." Absently, he began to pat his hands along the railing, creating a very subtle sound.

Sensing that she shouldn't press the issue, the Latina instead began to focus on his hands with curiosity. First her shoulders loosened, then her hips swayed a bit, even though she hadn't given them express consent to. "Is that-" She stopped herself and shook her head as Richard opened his eyes at the sound of her voice. Adrian forced a smile.

"What?"

"Nothing. Nothing. Sometimes – sometimes…nah, it – forget it."

The beat with his hands became more pronounced at he began to smile. _"What?"_ he persisted.

"Your hands," she laughed. "It's just – I thought – it's stupid." Adrian turned her back to him. "Sometimes my eyes see things or my ears hear things and my mind puts silly words to them, that's all."

Richard lifted his hand and pressed it to Adrian's arm. "And your heard was putting words to my hands?"

"I told you, it sounds ridiculous, but – but…" She spun around, accidentally knocking Richard's hand away. "It almost sounded like you were drumming 'Come Josephine in my Flying Machine.'"

Richard's eyes widened. "You – you know that song?"

"Of course I know that song! I _adore_ that song!" Adrian lifted her arms to the sky. "'Up, up! A little bit higher. Oh! My! The moon is on fire! Come Josephine, in my flying machine, going up, all on, goodbye!' How can you not love that?" she gushed, jutting her hips and prancing around him as she belted out the lyrics. She suddenly placed her hands on his torso, gripping him tightly, and forcing him to move in an awkward zigzag motion until his body began to freely comply with her ministrations. "Doesn't it just make you want to _move_?"

Richard felt all his muscles loosening up like overly oiled gears. He knew he shouldn't, but Adrian's hands on his sides – and sliding down to his hips – made him want to return the gesture. Before he realized what he was doing, he suddenly had his hands around Adrian's waist and he was picking her up off her feet and spinning her around.

Adrian squealed like a child at the circus, dangling her legs in the air until Richard put her back on the ground. She quickly grabbed her sides, doubling over in laughter. "Why Ricky!" she gasped, eyes gleaming. "I had no idea you had it in you!"

"Richard!"

The smile promptly dissolved from Richard's face and his posture stiffened like a board at the sound of Robert's voice. He and Adrian turned at once, to see a group of first class men approaching, led by Robert Underwood. "Father, I-"

"I can see very well what you're doing," Robert intoned, his eyes looking Adrian up and down like she was stink beetle or maybe a slug. "You weren't at breakfast this morning, Zoe thought you were ill in bed."

Stepping forward, Leo chose that moment to intervene. "We've been looking for you," he said jovially. "Are you alright?" He smiled, stepping towards Adrian. "I see you've run into your friend from the other night." He tipped his hat. "It's always a pleasure, Miss Lee."

Adrian backed up against the railing. "Likewise," she returned uncomfortably.

"We were just about to go for cigars and whiskey," Leo said. "Will you join us, Richard?"

Richard squirmed, his eyes searching desperately between Leo and Adrian and every so often glossing over his father's disapproving face. "I – I've probably kept you too long already," he said finally, looking regretfully at Adrian.

Adrian's dark locks bounced around her shoulders. "Of course," she agreed. "I wouldn't want to keep you from important business."

As Richard stepped towards the group of men, Leo opened his mouth: "Miss Lee, are you busy this fine evening?"

"I – no?" Adrian said, not sure where he was going with such a statement, or even what kind of answer he was looking for in return.

"Perhaps you'd be so kind as to accompany us at dinner then?" he queried, glancing quickly back at the other men, specifically Robert and Richard.

"Oh, Mr. Boykewich," she began uncertainly, "I don't know-"

"Don't pressure the girl, Leo," Robert interrupted. "Can't you see she has other things she has _other_ responsibilities? I'm sure she wouldn't be comfortable surrounded by-"

"Actually, I'm _entirely_ free this evening," Adrian interrupted, looking pointedly at the elder Underwood. She extended her hand to Leo. "I'd love to attend dinner with your party, thank you, Sir."

Leo gently kissed the back of Adrian's bare hand. "Splendid!" he beamed. After a beat, he nodded to the other men. "Why don't you go on without me? I'll catch up in a few moments, I'd like to take in a bit of the ocean air, if you don't mind?"

"And who would we be to stop you?" Robert bit back, his voice laced with spite.

Adrian watched the pack of gentlemen leave, with Richard reluctantly trailing behind. When they'd finally left the deck, she quickly spun towards Leo. "Why did you invite me?" she demanded.

"You are good for that lad," Leo responded calmly. "Richard is a good young man, though his father…" He peered over the railing. "I've been worried about him for a while now. I know that particular group does not care for me much, but Richard's different. He's rare; precious. And you, Adrian, make him sparkle. You saved his life last night. _That's_ why I invited you."

Adrian crossed her arms. "I've never been to anything first class in my life," she confided. "I don't think I'll fit in."

"Just collect yourself and stay calm, no matter what they may throw at you. When dinner comes, start the silverware from the outside in. And…" He turned to her, looking her up and down. "You'll need something a little fancier to wear."

"This is the best I've got," she replied, raising her arms to show off the white cotton button down dress with the piquet inset collar that she wore.

Leo looked her over for a moment, then snapped his fingers. "Come with me!"

Adrian folded her arms suspiciously, but followed the elder man anyway. "Isn't this inappropriate?" she asked. "You bringing a third class girl up to your sleeping quarters?"

"Third class?" he chortled. "All I see is a first class woman."

"Oh?" Adrian mused. "And what would your _wife_ say about that?"

"I wish I knew," Leo sighed as they reached his cabin. "She passed on about ten years ago. I miss her dearly. We had known each other almost our entire lives."

Adrian bowed her head. "I apologize."

"No need." Leo stepped into his cabin and moved across the room to a few luggage trunks. He dropped to one knee, grunting a bit beneath his own weight, and opened the trunk. As Adrian hovered in the doorway, he rustled around a bit, then eventually retrieved a plain box and rose to both feet once more. "I think this will do quite nicely," he said, crossing the room to hand her the box.

Adrian narrowed her gaze at the box, as a feral cat would a human. Finally, she accepted it and peeked inside, keeping one eye on Leo the entire time. Her breath caught when she removed the lid. _"Wh-"_

"I believe it will fit," he smiled.

Adrian pushed the box back. "I can't."

"Nonsense! I would be honored if you could wear it."

"Who's is it?"

"My daughter-in-law's," Leo grinned brightly. "I bought it for her while in London, but soon after received word that she and my son are expecting, so unfortunately, she won't be getting any use out of it any time soon after all. If I'm not mistaken," he squinted, "you are just about the same size."

Adrian considered his words, but ultimately shook her head again. "I'm sorry, I'm just not comfortable-"

"Take it!" Leo insisted. "You need not try it on in my presence, just take it back to your cabin and try it at your leisure. If it does not fit, we'll look into something else. If it does, wear it to dinner tonight."

Adrian hesitated, her jack slack as her mind jogged to come up with a proper rebuttal, but none came to mind. Finally she relented. "Thank you, Mr. Boykewich."

"Leo, please."

"Leo." Adrian hugged the box to her chest. "I shall see you this evening then."

Leo bowed his head. "Until then, Miss Lee."


	4. Chapter Three

**A/N: **I think there was some kind of bug in the system, because ever since I uploaded this, the new chapter hasn't been visible to the public, though it shows that there's a new chapter and it's visible on the live preview. *is not amused* I even e-mailed FFN Support about it, but they never got back to me (unsurprising) and this morning when I woke up I saw the review count had jumped to ten, then I realized…it was Princess Radrian reviewing chapter three to let me know that chapter four still wasn't showing up. So, I've decided to delete the last chapter and to re-upload it, in the hopes that it will work this time. Sorry about the delay!

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Three**

"Good evening, Miss."

Adrian smiled uneasily as she stepped through the door. She'd never imagined something aboard a ship could be so grandiose: it was like something out that belonged in a museum! Her neck literally ached as she craned her head back to look up at the vaulted class skylight, where the sunlight was billowing in like a message from God himself.

At least, that's what Grace would've insisted, if she'd been there. Of course, she wasn't, and that made Adrian all the more uncomfortable. This part of the ship was instead punctuated with high society: men and women who walked arm-in-arm, dressed in clothes worth more money than three generations of her family would ever make in their lives combined.

Adrian dropped a white gloved hand to her thigh and bunched a handful of the delicate cerulean fabric into the palm of her glove. She lifted it until the edge of the dress was no longer brushing against the floor and began to meticulously work her way down the steps. She resisted the urge to look over her shoulder to see if anyone was staring; surly, she must have looked as out of place as a stringy brown weed among blooming scarlet roses.

Once safely off the steps, she took a safe position against one of the wooden pillars, to the right of the staircase. From that vantage point, she could see the whole right side of the room. She crossed her arms across her chest at first. However, as she watched the aristocrats mill about and exchange short dialogue and conservative chuckles, she let her arms drop to her sides and straightened her back against the pole, mimicking the wealthy women as they clicked by in their satin heels.

"I hear there are several thousand tons of your father's steel aboard this very ship," Robert's voice slithered down from the staircase.

"In all the right places, of course."

Adrian lifted her chin, catching sight of Robert and Zoe gliding down the steps with the latter's arm looped flawlessly into Robert's. Adrian turned her head a few degrees to avoid their eyes, but acknowledged her – even in disgust – as they passed.

"Where's my son?" Robert suddenly inquired, simultaneously reaching for his pocket watch.

"Oh," Zoe singsonged as she playfully slapped his hand away from the time piece. "He'll be along."

"There is the count!"

"Good evening, _Zoe_."

Zoe immediately extended her gloved arm, allowing her wrist to dangle in front of a handsomely dressed man in a black tux and cream colored ascot, whose attire looked tenfold more expensive than Robert's. She cooed as the count kissed the back of her hand. "It's so good to see you."

After taking a quick survey of her surroundings and noting that nobody was watching, she lifted her hand to mimic Zoe and smiled gracefully, pretending as though the count was kissing her hand instead. Suddenly she tore her attention away from the scene as she noticed Richard's appearance at the top of the staircase from her peripheral view. She felt the corners of her mouth twitch as she took a clutched her swishing skirt and took a few steps towards him, as he concurrently made his way down the steps.

They both stopped, with just two steps in between them, and before Adrian had a chance to raise her hand, Richard clipped her gloved fingers under his index finger and lifted her hand into the open space between them and pressed an airy kiss to her hand.

Adrian felt her mouth break apart as a betraying heat rushed into her cheeks. "I saw that on a Nickelodeon once," she spoke, attempting to cover up signs her body was giving away. "I always wondered what it would be like."

Richard quirked an eyebrow, just a smidgeon disbelievingly, but didn't counter her words. Instead, he automatically angled his arm.

At first Adrian mentally stuttered, then realized he was beckoning her to walk with him, as Zoe had been with Robert. She straightened her posture and slid her arm into his, surprised to find that it fit like a key into a lock.

"We'll see you at dinner," Robert said, shaking hands with the count as Adrian and Richard approached them from behind.

"Darling," Richard spoke, as Zoe turned to catch Adrian's eyes. "Surely you remember Miss Lee." He motioned up and down at Adrian with his right hand.

Zoe pursed her lips. "Lee?" she echoed, as if holding back the bile in her throat. "Well, that's _amazing!_" She looked to Robert and laughed before swishing her head back in Adrian's direction. "You could _almost_ pass for a lady."

Robert nodded in agreement. _"Extraordinary."_

Adrian bit the fleshy insides of her mouth, forcing a smile on the outside as she held back the urge to introduce Zoe to her gloved fist on the inside. She shifted her attention to Richard, who was watching uncomfortably as his father and fiancé looped arms and traipsed off towards the dining quarters.

"My dear, it's delightful to see you!"

"What a remarkable voyage this is."

"It's mad, isn't it?"

"I love your perfume!"

Adrian's head was swimming as Zoe's and Robert's voices just ahead of them blended into the cacophony of music and regal sounding chatter. She wasn't sure which way to turn or where to look when they stopped walking, so she waited for Richard to provide her with a clue of some sort. Instead, she found him leaning into her shoulder and felt his breath against her ear as he began to whisper.

"There's the Countess of Hampton," he said, indicating a proud looking white with shoulder length white-blonde hair. "Very devout woman on the outside, but everyone knows she has her secrets." He frowned a bit as he spoke the last word. "Between you and me, don't get too close. She make look frail enough, but there are certain fringe groups that keep her in their pocket. She'll tear you down until you don't make sense anymore."

"Thanks for the warning."

Richard nodded and swirled around, pointing to the opposite side of the room. "And…" His eyes landed on a man who was just walking into the dining hall. "That's Granton Volberg, the richest man on the ship…and he has quite the temper, too. His little wife there, Angela, is two years younger than I, and in delicate condition. See how she's trying to hide it? _Quite_ the scandal." He swiveled again and pointed anew. "And that's Jackson Pappas and his mistress. Mrs. Pappas is at home with the children, of course. And over here we have Sir Griffin Costigan and his _best mate_."

"Best_ mate?_" Adrian asked, raising her dark brows as Richard motioned his hand in Griffin's direction and the latter gave a cheeky smile as he waved in return. "You don't mean-"

"I absolutely do. Peter is…well, let's just say he has several talents and was very popular with the royals before he met Griffin."

"He's splendid, Zoe," Peter whispered, grinning cheekily at Zoe.

Griffin pursed his lips and laid a firm hand on Peter's shoulder, pulling him back from Zoe. "He's far better than most company on this ship."

Adrian stopped straining her ear to eavesdrop upon the conversation as Leo approached them with a jovial expression spilling from his pores. "Mr. Boykewich," she greeted, curtseying as she'd observed several other women do since they'd entered the dining hall.

"You look breathtaking, Miss Lee," Leo complimented. He took her hand and carefully kissed the back of it, causing Adrian to grin. "You wouldn't happen to have room on your other arm to escort this old man to dinner, would you?"

"Two arms for two…" She glanced idly at Richard. "…_gentlemen_. Of course, Mr. Boykewich, I'd be honored."

"Absurdity!" Leo rebuffed. "I'm the one with the honor here, to be on the arm of such a brilliant young woman."

Adrian slipped her free arm around Leo's bent elbow and proceeded to walk with them through the dining quarters.

"Grant!" Leo called as they approached the latter.

"Well hello, Mr. Boykewich," Granton responded.

"How's your father doing?" Leo asked, breaking away from Adrian to shake Granton's hand. "I'd heard he'd been on bed rest for a spell."

"Just a scare," Granton promised. "He's doing much better now, I assure you."

"And your mother?"

"As spry as ever!"

Richard discreetly leaned into Adrian's ear and whispered, "The apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

Adrian nodded.

"Grant, Angie," he said courteously. "I'd like you to meet Adrian Lee."

"How do you do?" Angie said, bowing her head in Adrian's direction, all the while keeping her arm carefully placed across her slightly protruding stomach.

"Hello, Adrian," Granton said, before greeting her hand with a kiss. "Such radiant skin you have. Are you of the Sicilian Lees?"

Adrian briefly caught Leo's eyes and realized the elder man was about to open his mouth to save her, so she cut him off. "The Valley Glen Lees, actually."

"Ah…yes, _yes_."

She glanced down at the bare skin of her arm, silently amazed at how an expensive dress and white gloves could make someone instantly assume she was of Sicilian origin, yet if she were wearing the clothes that actually belonged to her and they'd instead met her on the third class deck, she certainly would've been pointed out as Mexican, of which she was only half. Adrian let her mind wander as Richard exchanged goodbyes with Granton, Leo, and Angela. She briefly curtseyed before he lead her away, customarily introducing her to various dukes, duchesses, earls, and countesses as they counted down until dinner was served.

By the time Adrian was seated at the dinner table, she felt like fireworks were going off in her head: the noise, the lights! There was so much going on that she couldn't concentrate. And the silverware! There were so many forks that she simply didn't know where to begin. The chaos, however, quickly stalled when Robert's voice cut straight to her.

"Tell us of the accommodations in steerage, Miss Lee. I hear they're quite good."

Adrian literally bit down on the tip of her tongue and held it for a beat as she stared down the elder man, then forced a smile as she replied: "The best I've seen, sir. Hardly _any_ rats."

"Miss Lee is joining us from third class," Zoe announced, over the sound of the curt laughter. "Robert tells me Mr. Boykewich asked for her company this evening."

"And what fine company she is!" Leo interjected, raising his champagne glass. "To Adrian," he proposed. Several glasses followed in salute, the last being Robert's and Zoe's. Leo chinked his glass against Richard's and swallowed a hefty swig.

Adrian felt her cheeks heating up again, so she switched her attention back to the place setting in front of her, and immediately the rush of fireworks came back to her head. "Are these all for me?" she whispered, aiming the question at Leo, who was sitting beside her.

"Just start from the outside and work your way in," Leo whispered in return.

The Latina nodded. "That's easy enough," she muttered under her breath. A slushy _plop_ called her attention to her plate. The white gleam had been marred by a glob of black slime, with semi-transparent round balls in it, almost like black cottage cheese.

"How do you take your caviar?"

Adrian closed her eyes and politely shook her head. "I don't. Never did care for the taste, but thank you for asking." Across the table, she noticed Richard suppressing a coy smile and had to hold back one of her own that matched it.

Robert scowled from beside Zoe. "And where, exactly, do you live, Miss Lee?"

Adrian sat a little straighter in her seat, with her hands piled neatly in her lap. "Well, as you can see, right now my address is the RMS Titanic. After that, well…I'm on God's good humor, as my friend Grace would say."

"And how is it you have means to travel?"

"You're a father," Adrian shot back acidly. "You would like to give your son the world, would you not? Well, the same goes for mine, even if he wasn't blessed with riches. In fact, he won tickets in a lucky hand of poker. A _very_ lucky hand."

"All life is a game of luck!"

"Mmm," Robert scowled from behind a glass of champagne. "A real man makes his own luck."

"And you find that sort of rootless existence appealing, do you?" Zoe inquired, quite literally looking down her nose at the darker skinned girl.

"I guess you could say I was born with it," Adrian replied, deadlocking eyes with Zoe. "It's in my blood, passed down from my immigrant grandparents. We're dancers, you see, and dance to the beat of our own drums; to the drumming in our _hearts_. I love waking up in the morning and not knowing what's going to happen. Or…" She grabbed a thick dinner roll and bit into, purposefully chewing with her mouth opened as she spoke. "…who I'm gonna meet." She shot a glance at Richard. "Just the other night Grace and I were sleeping under a bridge and now here I am tonight, having champagne with you fine people." She lifted her glass. "I'll have some more, thanks," she said, waving her glass at the waiter. "Life's a secret just waiting to be uncovered and I'll be damned if I just sit idly by because I'm afraid I might unearth something bad. As my father likes to say: 'You never know what hand you're gonna get dealt next.' So you have to take life as it comes at ya. You have to make each day count."

"Well said, Adrian!"

Richard lifted his glass. "To making each day count."

"To making each day count!" the remainder of the table, sans Robert and Zoe, chorused approvingly.

As the table lifted their glasses to their lips, Richard stole a glance at Adrian and stretched his arm across the table, as far as it would go. "To uncovering the secret."

Adrian grinned and met his glass with her own. "To uncovering the secret."


	5. Chapter Four

**A/N: **I think this chapter is pretty short. Sorry! I got a headache that wouldn't go away while I was writing it, so it just kind of dwindled a bit.

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Four**

_I'll let you in on a secret…but you have to meet me at the clock._

Richard rolled the cream colored note between his fingers as he hurried towards the staircase. He'd snuck a peek at it so many times that the writing was likely burned into the reflections of his eyes. Adrian had snuck it into his palm when he'd gone to kiss her hand goodbye, before he'd left the table with his father and the other upperclassmen for their traditional post-dinner cigars and brandy. It seemed as if the mindlessness had taken hours longer than usual

He was breathless by the time he got to the wooden pillar that he'd first found Adrian by earlier than evening. He braced himself against it, breathing heavily for a moment, then quickly composed himself and turned his head towards the top of the staircase, where he saw Adrian's back, as she stared at the clock. It began to chime and he inhaled deeply before stalking slowly up the steps.

Upon hearing the heavy noise of his well polished shoes, Adrian slowly turned around and folded her arms across her chest. "So," she propositioned, "you wanna go to a _real_ party?"

"Caviar and cheap shots not stimulating enough for you?"

A guttural noise came from the back of Adrian's throat, but she didn't answer him with words; there was no need. Instead, she bent her elbow, offering him her arm in the way that was customary for_ him_ to do.

Richard nodded. "I love a good secret!" Ten minutes later he found himself in the belly of the Titanic, surrounded by square dancing music and a haze of smoke. The smell was a strange one: liquor, cigars, and sweat all laced with an undercurrent of stewed vegetables, likely from the bowls of sludgy soup he saw on the various tables. Richard had never seen – nor smelt – anything like it before.

Nine-nine percent of the people in the room were up on the floor dancing. That would have _never_ been the case in his circle, let alone dancing wild, impromptu, and sometimes even mildly erotic numbers. At the moment, he was seated at a table, watching as Adrian spun circles with a little boy who was clutching her hands. He clapped his hands to the thrumming of the music, only to be distracted by a man with a thick ginger beard as he toppled onto and shattered a table, then waved his hand, motioning for another beer. The sight was simply so foreign to him that he couldn't help but laugh.

"I'm gonna dance with him now, okay?"

Richard stopped clapping as Adrian grabbed him by the wrist and yanked him up from his seat. He began to shake his head. "Adrian, no-"

"I thought you said you wanted to experience a real party?"

"Experience, yes! Dance?" He fervently shook his head. "I only know a handful of dances and I haven't seen one of them done here tonight."

"Let me guess, they're all lead by men?" Adrian boldly stepped closer to him. "Well tonight you'll get to follow." She still had hold of his wrist, which she guided around her hip and pressed firmly to the small of her back, seemingly amused by the gaping look on his face thanks to her forwardness. "Didn't your mother ever tell you to close your mouth unless she want to catch flies with it?" She pressed her thumb to his chin and pulled up, effectively shutting his lips.

Over her shoulder, Richard noticed that the little boy Adrian had been dancing with was scowling at him. He diverted his eyes as Adrian led him around in a semicircle. "Who's the boy?" he asked curiously.

"Hmm?"

"The one you were dancing with. I think he's watching us."

"Oh!" Adrian laughed and blew the boy in question a kiss as they turned again. "That's just Marc Molina's son. He's in the room a few doors down from mine and Grace's."

"I think he fancies you a bit."

"I know," Adrian laughed. "He's a sweet kid, just like his dad. Molina Senior is a bit of a mentor, if I do say. He doesn't always give the best advice, but his heart is in the right place."

As the fiddle picked up, Richard found himself spinning around so fast that the rest of the room was beginning to become blurry. Before he knew it, they were bouncing about the floor, like a scarf let loose in the wind. All of the sudden he felt Adrian tugging him; they were no longer dancing, but she was still leading him, and with a panicked realization, he noticed it was towards the stage where Grace was dancing with a dark skinned man. "Adrian, no!"

Adrian released him from her grip and set him free on the stage. She stepped to the far right corner and bunched up the blue fabric between her bare hands and lifted her layered skirt to her knees, kicked off her shoes, and began to perform a complicated series of moves in her black stockings.

Richard's eyes lit up as he recognized what she was doing: tap dancing. He loosened his bowtie and unbuttoned the top button on his white shirt, then he stuffed his hands into his pockets and countered her dance with a familiar dance he'd seen his mother perform for him as a very young child.

In the blink of an eye, Richard found himself in a breakneck tap dancing competition with Adrian, and he was only just becoming aware of the raucous crowd that had gathered around the stage to cheer them on. Without warning, Adrian suddenly grabbed his hands and began to spin them around as he'd seen her doing with the little boy earlier, only this time, the pace was much faster and pretty soon the only thing in focus was Adrian's beaming face against a haze of blurring colors.

They were met with hoots and fist pumps when they finally descended the stage. Richard felt as though his head was still back on the dizzying dance floor as Adrian pulled him over to a nearby table and collected two tall beers. He shook off the haze as she shoved one into her hand and then watched in awe as she downed the other drink for herself. "Sure you can hold all that?"

Adrian raised her eyebrow. "Gonna drink that?" she challenged. "Or should _I_?"

Richard couldn't help but laugh; the fiery look on her face told him exactly how serious she was. "I wouldn't have pegged you for a drinker."

"I typically like to remain stone cold sober, but for special occasions…" She pointed to the beer again. "Yellow?"

"What?"

"Are you yellow?" she repeated. "Scared? Too much brandy with the good ol' boys?"

Richard glared. "I'll show you yellow!" He pressed the beer to his lips and chugged until it was gone, then licked the foam off the rim for good measure. He suddenly felt a painful smack against his back when he was done and saw the ginger haired man he'd saw stumbling around earlier holding another beer out to him. Richard started to shake his head when the man moved towards him, tripped over his own feet, and the beer splashed all over his pristine shirt.

"You've had enough!" Adrian suddenly barked, grabbing the man by his collar. "Hey! Hey!" she hollered, motioning over someone from the crowd to come and get the drunk. "Get 'im outta here before he passes out somewhere and never gets back to his cabin!" After a couple of men had helped the man hobble away, she turned towards Richard with a frown. "I am so sorry," she said, shaking her head as she reached for some rags on a nearby table to dab him with. "Your shirt-"

"It's fine!" Richard laughed, taking the rag from her and shoving it back on the table. "I never liked this shirt anyway."

"Adrian!" Grace shouted, suddenly popping up from the crowd. Her blonde hair was a mess, but her face was rosy from all the dancing. She was hanging on the arm of the dark skinned man she'd been dancing with on stage earlier. "C'mon!" she yelped, as the dark skinned man swung her around in a loop. _"Jason!"_

Richard looked around and realized that people were looping arms everywhere, forming a human dancing chain. "I think she wants us to join in," he said, raising an eyebrow at the Latina. Quietly, he offered his arm.

"Well it's about time you loosened up!" Adrian looped one arm onto Grace and the other onto Richard. She gave a hoot as Jason connected his free arm with another woman who happened to be at the end of the dance chain.

The remainder of the evening was spent dancing – and drinking – until Richard felt that his feet were just two giant blisters pulsating beneath his dress shoes. They finally decided to leave when Mr. Molina had consumed a little too much to drink and Richard offered to help make sure he and his son got back to their cabin alright.

"I told him not to take the boy down there tonight!" Virginia, Marc's wife, ranted, as she walked them out from getting Marc and her son into their beds. "I knew this would happen. I _knew!_" She looked embarrassedly at Richard. "He's not usually this irresponsible. He just-"

"Gets caught up in the moment sometimes?"

"Yes." Virginia glanced at Adrian and sputtered something in Spanish that Richard didn't understand, to which Adrian responded, inciting a back-and-forth that he couldn't follow. Silently, he slipped out into the hallway and waited for a few minutes, reflecting on the day's events, until Adrian finally emerged.

"Sorry 'bout that."

"Not a problem, I'm glad we could help."

Adrian rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet. She was still in her stockings, holding her shoes on her index and middle fingers. "So…" she said quietly. "That's my cabin."

Richard looked up in the direction she was pointing. "I guess this is goodnight then?"

Adrian smiled weakly. "I guess. It's been…_enlightening_."

"I apologize again," he said quickly. "About my father…and Zoe."

Adrian shook her head. "Don't. I knew what I was getting myself into when I agreed to Mr. Boykewich's invitation. I was just being hotheaded. I should make a profession out of that, y'know? But in spite of their efforts, I actually had a pretty good time tonight. But the fact remains: we're from two very different worlds, Richard."

Richard looked down as she unlocked her door and stepped halfway inside. "Goodnight, Adrian."

"'Night, Ricky."

Richard watched the door shut and heard it click. He looked down at his shirt: the beer had dried and now the fabric looked crumpled and yellow, like a cat had urinated on it. He sniffed it and realized it reeked of booze. He sighed as he turned down the hallway, hoping he would be able to sneak into his cabin, get cleaned up, and into bed before his father got back. Providing, of course, that he wasn't already there, waiting for him when he walked through the door.

He dug into his pocket and retrieved the note Adrian had given him. He opened it up again and read it: _I'll let you in on a secret…but you have to meet me at the clock._ Richard stopped and the pain of his shoes rubbing against his feet momentarily ceased. He entertained the idea of going right back over to Adrian's door, knocking, and then inviting himself inside. But as quickly as the idea came, he pushed it out of his head. He was _engaged_. And, as Adrian had said, they were from two different worlds.

Richard folded up the note again and shoved it back into his pocket. "In another life maybe," he whispered, resuming his pace. After all, he had responsibilities and as unhappy as Zoe made him, marrying her allowed him to fulfill those responsibilities. "But in the real world, this is just our little secret. My secret life."


	6. Chapter Five

**A/N: **Two chapters two days in a row. ;) Special thanks to **CheeseMuffins17** for reviewing the last two updates!

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Five**

Richard sat reclined in his chair, covered up to his neck in a white sheet, as an older man with a handlebar mustache stood above him, gently but firmly guiding a silver blade through the thick white cream that covered his neck and cheek. Every so often, Richard would open his eyes to peek at the man, but then he'd shut them again, against the warm sunlight filtering through the windows. It felt good, but considering the ringing in his ears, it was torture to look at.

Thudding footsteps gathered his attention not a minute later and Richard realized they were getting louder. He opened his eyes again just in time to see his father barge through the doors and direct his shaver out.

"I'll take it from here."

Richard saw his father pick up the knife and before he could protest, the silver glinted in the sunlight, catching Richard's eyes in just the right way to make pain vibrate his entire head. His stomach knotted up as he felt the blade touch his skin again, this time much harder and more callously than before. The wipe didn't feel clean and in fact it even hurt, but it didn't feel as though the skin had been broken. _Yet._

"You're not to see that girl again."

Richard kept his eyes closed, but continued to mentally monitor the feel of the shave to gauge his father's temper. "I was merely keeping up appearances. Isn't that what you've taught me to do, Father?" He suddenly felt the blade stop against his Adam's apple.

"This is not a game! You know the money's gone."

"Yes," Richard replied carefully. "And whose fault is that?"

"_Richard,"_ Robert warned. "We have a deal."

The blade pressed a little harder against Richard's skin. "We do," he agreed. "And not a day goes by that I don't think about getting Mother away from you, once and for all. But lest we not forget that a deal works both ways: you need me to marry Zoe for her money and I need you to leave Mother. If it wasn't for her, I would've left you a long time ago and we both know that! So far, I've held up my end of the bargain, so I would suggest that you stop threatening me, unless you want me to call of this engagement right here and now and then you can be left to fend for yourself on the lonely streets of New York."

"You're right," Robert hissed. "A deal _does_ work both ways. So for your mother's sake, you had better not fuck this up!"

Richard felt the rough swipes of the blade continue up and down his neck, throat, and face in silence and just when he expected it to be over, he felt the blade press against his cheek again and nick his jaw line. The cut stung immensely, but Richard dared not move a muscle until he heard his father's footsteps near the door, followed by a telltale slam. After a few minutes of silence, he opened his eyes against the glare of the morning sun and pushed himself out of the chair.

The vanity mirror revealed a bloody nick, about the size of the quick on his pinky nail. He grabbed the handkerchief from his pocket and dabbed away the stream of blood, which made it look much worse than it was. He resolved to hold the handkerchief there a while, until the wound stopped bleeding. This lie wouldn't be hard to cover up, he'd simply tell the truth for once: he was cut during his shave. However, the truth – the warning behind it – was a much harder thing to cover up.

Richard moved across the room to his luggage bags and began to rifle through them, all the while holding the handkerchief to his cheek. Finally, he retrieved a small box and opened it, revealing a handful of photos. On the top was a sepia toned photo of woman with an oval face and long, shiny brown hair. In the particular photo, she wore a smile on her face. Subsequent photos consisted of her and Richard, when he was just a young boy, no more than six.

Richard wadded up the bloodied handkerchief and tossed it aside; the bleeding had finally clotted. He lifted the top photo and kissed the place where his woman's forehead was gently. "Mother…" The vibration of the word on his tongue made his head hurt all over again, but he didn't care. "I promised you I would get us away from him," he whispered. "And I will."

A pert knock sounded at the doors. "Richard? Darling, are you ready yet? Can I come in?"

"Just a moment more, Dear." Richard hurried to return the box to his luggage and scampered over to his closet, where he rushed to pull on a suit jacket.

"Richard?"

"You can come in now."

Zoe briskly entered, dressed in a full length black-net and silk-satin dress, covered in fine golden beading. She approached her fiancé with a crisp smile and reached to do his tie, only to notice the gouge on his jaw. "Richard! What happened?"

Richard turned away as she cupped his face. "Just an accident with the shaving blade," he lied. "It's nothing."

"It looks horrendous!"

"It's _fine_," he assured, placing a firm hand on Zoe's cheek. "I'm fine, thank you."

Zoe frowned, but after a beat, she resumed tying his tie. "You should wipe that off before we go down to service."

"Of course."

Zoe studied his face quietly. "Is something else wrong with you?"

"Why would you think that?"

Zoe shrugged. "You just look…you don't look yourself this morning."

"Too much of a bad thing, isn't that right, son?"

Richard looked up at the same time Zoe turned her head over her shoulder. He shot a dirty look at Robert.

"A bad thing?" Zoe turned her head back to Richard. "What 'bad thing'?"

"Brandy, of course," Robert laughed heartily. "I'll be sure to keep an eye on him tonight so he doesn't get out of hand again."

Zoe's laugh sounded shrill against the pounding in Richard's head. "We'd better get going. We'll probably be late as it is." He broke away from his fiancé and made a beeline for the door, diverting just once to avoid Robert as the elder man attempted to head him off. He'd never been anxious to go to church in his life, but this time, he was just looking forward to the excuse to avoid speaking to anyone for an hour.

The service passed uneventfully and as monotonously as usual. Growing up, church was just another in a long line of appearances that his father made him and his mother attend. Once upon a long, long time ago, Richard had briefly been religious, praying to God every night when his father took to the bottle and did unspeakable things to him and his mother. However, God had failed him then, and ever since, Richard had concluded that no such supreme being existed, which was why he had taken it upon himself to protect both him and his mother, whatever the cost.

By the time Richard they were halfway through their tour of the Titanic, courtesy of Thomas Andrews, the ship's architect himself, Richard's head was finally starting to clear in the cold, sea salt air, and the sun was no longer killing him the way it had been when he'd woken up to it that morning. As Mr. Andrews was talking to them about the lifeboats, Richard suddenly became aware of how few of them he was seeing. In fact, he'd always been rather good with his mathematics, and the words coming out of the architect's mouth just didn't add up.

"Mr. Andrews, forgive me, but I've just calculated the sum in my head, and the number of lifeboats times the capacity you mentioned, it seems if there are not enough for everyone aboard."

"Quick lad, there, aren't you, Richard?" Mr. Andrews replied jovially. "About half, actually. In fact, I put in these new type davits which can take an extra row of boats inside this one. But it was thought – by some – that it looked too cluttered…so I was overruled."

Zoe scoffed from behind Richard. "Waste of deck space as it is on an unsinkable ship." She strode ahead, following beside Robert as the latter smacked one of the lifeboats with the back of his hand.

"Rest assured, Richard, I've built you a fine ship. These are all the lifeboats you need."

Richard slowed his pace as Mr. Andrews quickened his stride to catch up with Zoe and Robert. He glanced back at the lifeboats beside him again and shook his head. As he made a move to start walking again, he suddenly felt a pair of hands wrap around his forearms and shove him off balance. He was about to fight back when he noticed the familiar tan hands and whirled around to see Adrian in an oversized coat and hat, ushering him towards a door to a vacant room.

Once inside, Adrian slammed the door and shoved herself in front of it. "I've been trying to speak to you all morning!" she spoke breathlessly. "I tried to catch you at the morning service, but your father's goons threw me out. You wouldn't believe what I went through to sneak up on the first class deck!"

"Adrian." Richard shook his head regretfully. "This is impossible. I can't see you!" He attempted to move her out of the way of the door, but she held firm.

"I need to talk to you!"

"No, Adrian! _No._ I'm engaged. I'm _marrying_ Zoe. I –" his voice faltered at the words he was about to say "–_love_ Zoe." He closed his eyes so as to not look at her. Instead, he envisioned his mother, and all the good he could do for her once he had the money and means and his father was out of their lives for good.

Adrian tore the hat off her head and shed the coat, tossing both to the polished floor. She stood before Richard wearing the same dirty, smelly, stained, and disheveled clothing she'd worn the first night she'd met him. "Richard, you're no picnic. You're a little brat, even. But under that – under that…you're – you're human. You're _real_. We're the same, you and I. We may come from different worlds, but there's something inside you that I recognize."

"And you got all that from _one dinner_?"

"No." Adrian laughed bitterly. "No," she crossed her arms across her chest, "I got all of that from _one dance_. And the fact that you like to drum 'Come Josephine in my Flying Machine' with your bare hands." She raised her index finger. "I see what you're trying to do, though: you're trying to upset me in order to push me away, because you're afraid. Afraid to let me in. What are you afraid I'm going to do, Ricky? Hmm? What – what has happened to you to make you so afraid?" She let her arms fall loose at her sides. "I bet it's the same thing that made you go out on that deck and think about kissing that gun goodnight, isn't it?"

Richard turned away. "You don't know anything. You're just a stupid, pathetic little third class girl. S–" He bit his lip. " –_steerage_. You got one taste of my world and you want more, but as you said, this _isn't_ your world, Adrian. And you need to leave me alone." He grabbed for the door handle, but Adrian grabbed his hand to stop him.

"I can't. I'm too involved now. You can say all the hurtful, cruel things you want to me, but it will not change a thing. I can't turn away without knowing you won't end up with another gun to your temple. I – I have to know that you're going to be all right. That's all that I want."

"Well, I'm fine. I'll be fine. _Really._"

"I don't think so. Someone's got you trapped. Zoe? Your father? _Someone._ And you're going to die if you don't break free. Maybe not right away, but sooner or later…Look, if the inertia of your life is plunging ahead, a force needs to act upon it to slow it down; to stop it. I'm trying to be that force. Please, Richard. Ricky, _please_. Let me help you!" She touched his face ever so gently.

"It's not up to you to save me, Adrian."

"You're right." Her hand fell back to her side. "I've tried once already. Only you can truly do that."

"I'm going back now. Leave me alone." He tried to sound resolute. He _hoped_ he did as he turned his back on her.

Adrian pressed her face to the beveled window and watched the blurry outline of Richard's form pass by. She briefly touched her stomach, feeling it flip and flop in the way stomachs do to warn their owners that something bad is coming. On her way back to the third class deck, she suddenly found herself in the throes of seasickness.

"What happened?" Grace asked upon her arrival. "Where's Richard?"

"Probably with his fiancé."

"He – he _didn't_ break it off?"

"No. He told me he didn't want to see me again."

"But-"

"It's not his fault, Grace. Something's got its hooks so deep into him that he's merely a puppet on their chains."

"I'm sorry." Grace laid a pale hand on her friend's shoulder. "At least you tried. That's a lot more than most people would do."

Adrian shook her head. "Tell me some good news," she squeaked, discreetly wiping her eyes with her sleeve. "What's going on with you and Jason?"

Grace beamed. "He's getting off with us in New York! Says his parents have got a couple of friends in New York who were going to let him stay with them; said he might be able to persuade them to let us stay too, if we wanted."

"What friends?" Adrian questioned suspiciously.

"They're immigrants," she said, squinting as if trying to remember. "I think he said…I think he said their names were Shakur. Margaret and – and San-ggy? San – Sanjay? I'll have to ask him again. But isn't that amazing? I told ya, Adrian! God's got a plan for us!"

Adrian slapped Grace on the back. "Whatever you say, Gracie." She whirled around. "Hey, I'm gonna go stroll the deck for a while, alright? I'll see you later, say, 'round dinner time?"

Grace hugged her friend. "Sorry again about Richard."

"Don't be," she said, smiling sadly into Grace's golden curls. "As you say: it's in God's hands now."

Grace wiggled her finger in Adrian's face. "I'll convert you yet!"

"You can try," she winked. Once Grace had left, Adrian strolled the top deck for about an hour before finding herself at the front of the ship. She gripped the icy bars until they fell warm from her hands and then she proceeded to climb onto the lower bars and brace her legs and waist against the remaining ones. She held out her arms as the wind rushed under them and her hair whipped back from her head, flowing as though it was under water.

Adrian remained there as the sky went through a kaleidoscope of colors. Her skin was beginning to grow goose flesh by the time the sky had turned into strips of lemon and tangerine, intercut with frothy white clouds. It looked like a giant fruit and cream pie that she wanted to take a gaint bite out of.

"Hello, Adrian."

Adrian craned her neck and found Richard watching her from about five feet away, with his hands piled against his stomach. She nodded, but decided against returning a verbal greeting. She studied him in the pale light. Something about him looked more relaxed than the last time she'd seen him.

"I changed my mind."

"Why?"

"You said you were trying to help me, but that only I could save myself, and I realized: that's exactly what I've been trying to do for someone nearly my whole life."

"It's not a bad thing to accept help, Richard."

"I know." He looked down at his shoes. "But it is bad to let someone control your entire life. And I've been letting my father do that as far back as I can remember. I couldn't have prevented it back then, but _now_…" Richard meandered towards her.

"_Shhh."_ Adrian pressed her finger to her lips, effectively silencing him. As she offered hers, she said, "Give me your hand." Once he'd acquiesced, she secured her fingers around it. "Now close your eyes." She noted the slight hesitation in the cock of his head. "Go on."

Richard complied with an almost imperceptible nod. He squeezed her hand a little.

"Now step up," she instructed, tugging him towards the railing. "Keep your eyes closed, don't peek!"

"I'm not." Richard allowed Adrian to arrange his hands on the top railing.

"Now step up onto the railing," Adrian urged, tapping his leg lightly.

Richard lifted his leg and let Adrian guide it onto the railing. Once it had found a secure hold beneath the arch of his shoe, he lifted his other leg and repeated the process until he was entirely at the mercy of the railings. And Adrian.

"Hold on. Keep your eyes closed." Adrian climbed up behind him. A flash of insecurity bolted through her. Richard was taller and bulkier than her, so if he were to let go for some reason and fall, she wouldn't be able to support him. But as she secured her feet onto the railings and braced herself against his back, the worries blew away in the wind. She didn't know how she knew, but she _did_: "You won't let go."

Richard shook his head. "I won't let go."

"You trust me?" she asked, unable to keep a hint of surprise out of her voice.

"I trust you."

"Alright." She wrapped her hands around his and lifted them, molasses slow, until they were ramrod straight, forming a human cross against the skyline. "Open your eyes."

Richard flexed his fingers against the rushing air. It might have been too cold, except that the warmth from Adrian's body was feeding into him, acting as a barrier to the cold. "I'm flying!"

Adrian threaded her fingers through his and turned his wrists to face out. "Going with me in my flying machine…Up he goes, up, up he goes!"

Richard turned his head and craned his eyes to the far corners of their sockets, staring sideways at Adrian as she reworded the lyrics to "Come Josephine in my Flying Machine." He smiled at her, realizing he could be content to listen to her voice for the rest of his days. "'Up, up! A little bit higher. Oh! My…'" He leaned in, studying the sunset reflected in her eyes. "Your eyes are on fire."

Adrian curled in their arms, bringing them down to wrap around Richard's waist. She took in a hearty breath of salty air and then plunged her mouth against Richard's. It was a moist, hungry kiss, but sweet enough that it was only lips against lips, with the occasional, accidental, clink of a tooth against a tooth. She gasped against his lips as she felt his hand entangle itself into her hair, intensifying the kiss tenfold.


	7. Chapter Six

**A/N: **I've been excited for this chapter, because I spent a long time trying to figure out how to change the details to make it fit Radrian, instead of just being a rewrite of Jack and Rose. Hopefully you'll like what I've done!

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Six**

"Are you sure this is appropriate?" Adrian asked as they swept into the Underwood cabin.

Richard shut the door and locked it. "Just my father and I in this room, so it's fine."

"I doubt Underwood Senior would agree with that. When, by the way, can we be expecting to see him?"

Richard laughed bitterly. "The man's a drunk," he said simply. "He won't be back as long as the cigars and brandy hold out."

Adrian looked about the room in awe. "Looks like a right hotel in here," she breathed. Then she tapped her foot as Richard began to rearrange the furniture in the room. "Y'know, I'd normally be suspicious of a man asking me for a favor and then locking me in his room, but I trust you. However, should I be wrong about your good intentions, Mr. Underwood, know that I won't be having sex with you…not after only two dates."

After moving a sofa, Richard lifted his head slowly. "Why, Miss Lee, I'd _never! _I'm hurt that you'd still have such low thoughts of me."

"What's the favor you're requesting of me, then?"

Richard motioned his hand towards the now cleared center of the room. "What does this look like to you?"

"A bald spot in the middle of a luxury room. Is it supposed to look like anything else?"

"A dance floor."

"A dance floor?"

Richard nodded. "I want you to teach me how to dance."

"You do tap dancing well enough."

"I mean _real_ dancing. The kind I saw you do in the belly of the ship last night. The kind that makes your soul shake. I know you have it in you, Adrian Lee. It's part of what makes you so free. I want that; I want to be like that."

Adrian shrugged off her smudgy coat and tossed it over the back of the sofa. She moved to Richard and tugged him out of the dashing dress coat he also wore and tossed it on top of hers. Then she untangled the bowtie Zoe had made that morning and pulled it off of his neck, casting it into a dark corner of the room. "First you need to free yourself up," she said, unbuttoning his cufflinks and the top button on his shirt.

"And then what?"

"I need a stick."

"A stick?" Richard blustered.

"Yes, you know, something long and hard and–" She covered her mouth with her index finger as she began to search around the room for something that could fit her requirements.

Richard suddenly bounced into the next room. "I think I may have an idea."

"Oh?" Adrian queried, hot on his tail.

Richard fumbled with a large safe, twisting and turning the combination until the heavy metal door popped. He reached inside, explaining as he did, "This is my father's. He lugs this thing around with him wherever he goes. It contains the last valuable thing to the Underwood name."

"You mean you're–"

"In debt, yes. Drowning in it. All the booze and the drugs and the gambling…it's his fault. This is the last thing left: it's my mother's, a family heirloom." He extracted a silver, diamond encrusted staff, topped with a heart shaped blue gem and held it out to Adrian.

Adrian took the staff with the utmost carefulness. "It's – it's gorgeous," she breathed. "Is that a sapphire?"

"A diamond."

"A blue diamond?"

Richard nodded. "A very_ rare_ blue diamond. Fifty-six carats, to be exact."

"With the way you talk about your father, I'm surprised he didn't sell it."

"He thought about it, then he realized he could use it as a selling point."

"To sell his son?"

"Exactly. He had me present that to Zoe's parents. It's a wedding gift. They have no idea I'd be bringing my debts to the marriage bed, but they certainly have the money to cover them, with enough leftover."

"Without having to sell this?"

"Yes. And, of course, the plan would be to pass it onto my firstborn, to keep the heirloom in my mother's family. It's a win-win."

"Except for the part about you marrying a woman you don't love."

"Except for that."

"May I ask: how did it come to be in your mother's family?"

"This diamond was worn by Louis XVI and they called it _Le Coeur de la Mer_."

"French?"

"Mhmm."

"What does it mean?"

"The Heart of the Ocean. It used to be a necklace, see?" Richard held up the staff, pointing to the hook on the top miniature diamond on the heart. "Legend has it that it was ripped from Louis's neck by Marie Antoinette in a jealous rage, after learning of a lovechild he'd had with a mistress, while failing to produce any heirs with her."

Adrian narrowed her eyes. "Are you telling me–"

"That my mother's family is descended from the bastard line of Louis XVI?" He shrugged. "That's the legend, I didn't say it was actually true. But, he _did_ wear the necklace and it was fashioned into a staff and lost for many generations until it turned up in the late eighteen-hundreds in my maternal lineage. So…who knows?"

"It's a good story for the kids, anyhow. What's family history without drama and an affair here or there anyway, right?"

Richard nodded. "So, will it work for your purposes?" he asked hopefully.

"Oh!" Adrian grinned. "It'll more than work! _!Perfecto!_" She tossed it between her hands, getting a feeling for the weight of it, then she moved out into the cleared area that Richard had made in the middle of the room. She began to twirl the staff between her fingers.

Richard rested his head against the doorframe, watching as the light in the room caught the diamonds and caused the staff to look like a sparking firework as it danced between Adrian's nimble fingers. "Sure you're not going to drop that?"

"I thought you trusted me?"

"I do."

Adrian tossed the staff behind her with her right hand, reached back with her left, and caught it safely in her palm without looking. She pointed the blue heart at Richard and tilted it up twice in quick succession. _"Ven aqu__í.__"_

He had no idea what she'd said, but the message was clear: he strode up to her and lifted his arms as he'd done on the bow of the ship. "I'm at your mercy."

Adrian tapped his chest with the staff. "Strong man," she complimented, before ducking under his arms and moving behind him. She entangled their hands as she'd done on the ship and then slipped the staff into Richard's palm. "Get a feel for it," she instructed. She guided his arm up and down. "How does it feel?"

"Heavy. Overwhelming."

"Good. Absorb that. Let it consume you." Suddenly she swatted his arm, knocking the staff into the air. It somersaulted as it came back down and Richard lurched out desperately to catch it, only for Adrian swoop down and catch the staff centimeters before it could hit the ground. "What did I tell you? Loosen up, Ricky. You can't learn to dance without breaking down those barriers you've built up." She stepped behind him again and wrapped her arms around his waist. "Take the staff again. Toss it between your hands, slowly."

Richard did as instructed. Every few tosses, he spread his hands a little further apart, making the potential for dropping error much greater. All the while he felt Adrian massaging his midsection with her fingertips. He stiffened briefly when her hands moved to his hips and began to instruct his legs to sway as he was tossing. Soon he found himself moving in swishing semi-circles as he tossed the staff. "Where did you learn to do this?"

"Would you believe me if I said I ran away with the circus?"

"Would you expect me to?"

Adrian grinned. "You don't expect me to tell you all my secrets at once, do you?" She skirted around him until she stood in front of him, took the staff from him, and spun it with one hand around her neck and it ended up in her other hand.

Richard relaxed as Adrian guided his hands to her hips. He held his breath as she bounced a little under his touch and twirled the staff around their heads. The rush of the air created by the motion felt like angels' fingers stroking against his neck.

"Keep your eyes on me."

"That's not hard to do."

"I believe you are blushing, Mr. Underwood."

At that moment, he became keenly aware of the fire in his cheeks, especially as she closed the gap between their bodies. "What happened to dancing?"

"I like a little music with my dance. You're a musician, are you not?"

"I'm no musician."

"You're a drummer, that's a form of music."

"Not according to my father."

"Well your father's not here right now, is he?"

"No," Richard agreed. "No he's not." He pulled a chair and a small, round wooden table closer to the space he'd cleared out and sat down. "If I drum, you'll dance?"

"Sounds like a proper working relationship to me."

Richard grinned. He applied his hands, palms flat, to the table, then he tested it by tapping his fingers alternatively against the grain. Satisfied with the level of noise it created, he bent and flexed his fingers, then began to drum an unfamiliar tune against the wood. With a twinkle in his eye, he looked up. "Ready when you are."

"We'll see about that." He drummed a traditional, fast paced introduction for her and with the final slap of his hands he observed Adrian tossed the staff into the air. At first he found himself drumming something completely nonsensical; completely original. He'd watch her body, moving as fluidly as the Atlantic waves, and he'd slap his hands against the table in whatever beat her body moved him. Then as he caught sight of the rainbows reflecting on the walls and her skin from the diamonds on the staff, as he watched the staff itself fly through the air as though on invisible wings, he found himself reverting to a familiar song: "Come Josephine in my Flying Machine." Richard could practically hear the words as the staff somersaulted through the air.

Soon the drumming had died out completely and Richard was just watching Adrian, entranced by the power she conveyed with each step, each jump, each breath. He stood up and made his way up behind her, encircling her waist with his arms. "Up she goes…"

Adrian turned completely in his arms until they were facing one another and she delicately encircled her hands around his neck. "Up, up he goes."

"I think this is the most secure I have been in my whole life. Right here, with you, Adrian."

Adrian stopped swaying with him and stepped back. She gave him a careful once over and then touched the Heart of the Ocean to his forehead. "Ricky Underwood, I hereby bequeath you your own person."

Richard bowed his head. "Thank you." He pursed his lips. "Adrian, can you go put that back in the safe for me?"

Adrian looked faintly confused, but nodded. "Sure."

While Adrian was distracted, Richard hurried into the next room and hastily handwrote a note. When he was done, he moved into the next room behind Adrian and embraced her in a kiss. As he kissed her, he slipped the note into the safe beside the staff and closed it.


	8. Chapter Seven

**A/N: **Did you miss me? ;) Well hopefully this chapter wets your Radrian thirst a bit! (Speaking of Radrian thirst: they're finally in Freshman English together! Hells to the yes!)

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Seven**

When the last of the furniture had been moved back into place, Adrian collapsed into a chair and wiped a few beads of sweat from her forehead. "I'd say I'm hot, but I think all this sweating is catching the cool air in here and giving me goose flesh."

Richard ducked into his room and back out again, holding up one of his jackets. He offered his hand and helped her to her feet and gently draped the jacket over her shoulders.

Adrian stuffed her arms into the sleeves and chuckled as she held up her hands to reveal how they were so long that it gave the appearance of her lacking wrists. "Long arms, hm?"

Richard lifted one arm and carefully rolled back the sleeve to her wrist, then proceeded to repeat himself with her other arm. He'd only folded it twice when they began to hear the clicking of locks emanating from the main door into the room. Richard immediately grabbed the Latina by her exposed hand and hauled her across the room.

"I thought you said nobody was going to show up!" Adrian hissed.

Richard winced and forcefully pressed his fingers to his lips as they ducked into yet another room, running and sliding around things as though they were in an obstacle course. He stopped suddenly and carefully pushed a door shut, but it made a clicking noise. Before he could dwell on it, he noticed that Adrian was already by the next open door and he quickly darted through it with her right on his heels.

Adrian could hear the click of an opening door, the one Richard had just closed, after they escaped through and shut the latest door. "We're definitely being tailed."

Richard touched her lips as he opened the last door, pushed her out, and then shut it. He couldn't help but smile as they slipped into the empty hallway together, side by side, as if nothing was wrong.

Adrian covered her mouth, muffling a smirk as they quickened their pace. She could feel her heart throbbing at the back of her throat and frankly, it was a turn on. She looked over her shoulder just in case and from the corner of her eye she saw that it had prompted Richard to do the same. A gasp fled her lips as she saw Robert's head poking out of the door they'd just exited. "Shi-"

The socialite grabbed her hand before she could finish her expletive and they broke into a trot down the hallway. The trot turned into a full fledged run once they hit the stairs and Richard nearly tripped over Adrian at least four times before they got to the bottom, swerved a sharp right, and bounded into a lift just as it was closing. "Down, down, down!"

"Close it! Close it!" Adrian bellowed, attempting to help shut them in as the pounding of Robert's shoes grew near. Her nails dug into Richard's hand when she saw his father's red, contorted face appear on the other side of the bars. She raised her hand sweetly as the lift began to descend. _"¡Adios!"_

Richard yanked open the doors as the lift stopped and pushed Adrian out. His shoes slipped across the slippery floor and the side of his cheek smashed into a sign indicating that they had ended up on _E Deck_. His stomach was tied up in so many knots that he wasn't sure whether he wanted to keep running or to vomit.

Adrian, however, was cackling enough for all three of _Macbeth_'s witches though and made the decision for him by pulling him down the hall by the sleeve of his coat. When she'd finally run until her legs were screaming she fell against the wall, using a doorframe to keep her upright. "We have _got_ to do this more often!" she laughed.

Richard bent over with his hands on his knees, heaving for breath. "I take it you do this more often than I do then?"

Her chocolate eyes sparkled. "As a matter of fact, that's how I caught my ride a few days ago. If you think this is rough, you should've seen what Grace and I went through to make sure we didn't miss the boarding!"

Richard opened his mouth to respond to her when he glanced out the round glass window on the door Adrian was leaning against and yelped. _"Come on!" _he screamed, catching his father's searing eyes.

Adrian shrieked in delight as they flew around a corner and ran all the way to a dead end. The hand that had been holding Richard's was slimy with sweat and she quickly released his hand and turned back in the opposite direction. "Here!" she hollered, pushing open the door. Her ears were assaulted by a shrill engine but she bowled inside anyway and slammed the door, locking it behind Richard.

Richard slapped his hands to his ears deftly feeling for the blood he was sure must be spurting from them. But all he found was a thick sweat coating along his neck and the edge of his hairline. "Where are we?"

Adrian, mirroring his posture, shook her head. "Your lips are moving but I can't hear a damn thing!" She took a step and then looked down, focusing her attention on a ladder that dropped down a hole where a devilish red illumination and hot steam were radiating. She looked up and raised her eyebrows.

Richard took one hand away from his ear and waved it. There didn't appear to be any other entrances or exits besides the one they had just come through anyway. "Down the rabbit hole!" he yelled, knowing that in all likelihood his words fell on deaf ears. "I'll go down first!" he jumped onto the ladder and scuttled his way down. Once his feet were on solid ground again he waved Adrian down and made sure to position himself advantageously, in case she were to slip or fall.

She didn't. In fact, she jumped off at the end, bowling into him and knocking them both to the oily ground with her landing on top of him. "Didn't break anything, did I?" she grinned, lifting her hand to his face and smearing an oily finger across his cheek.

Richard didn't say anything, but he knew right then and there that if she wanted, she could absolutely break his heart. However, he pushed that overly sentimental thought aside as she crawled off of him – seemingly pleased by what he suspected she had taken as speechlessness – and offered a hand to help him up. He inwardly grumbled at the idea, thinking he should be the one to help her up, but he took the gesture for what it was and realized she was deceptively strong for her tiny frame.

"What are you two doin' down 'ere?" a ripe Scottish accent roared.

Adrian whirled around, accidentally smacking a meaty man in a nasty grease smudged formerly white shirt in the face with her hair. "Don't mind us!" she yelled, pushing Richard against the back. "We'll find our own way out!"

Richard clawed at his throat as he took off running again. The heat was unbelievable inside what he was now sure had to be the belly of the ship as there were people all around them like the one who had just caught them, hauling shovels of coal into hissing furnaces. He grasped for his bowtie, loosening it around his neck until it came undone and the flaps began to whip against his neck like a pirate ship's flags at full speed ahead. He fumbled to unbutton the first three buttons on his white shirt to let some air against his scalding skin, but the air itself was mostly steam, and only made him hotter.

Adrian had lost track of how long they'd been running through hell, but by the time they came upon a looming steel door, they'd lost their aggressors, at least for the time being. She quickly pushed open the door, gasping raggedly at the new – though musty – air as she toppled inside. There were wooden crates everywhere. "Storage room," she muttered, shuffling, which was a welcome change from all the running. Then she stopped, her eyes catching a flashy crimson and silver vehicle at the center of the room. She let out a loud whistle of approval and jogged over to it, all the while her muscles were contracting in protest.

Richard grinned as he slid up behind her, ever so lightly brushing her hips with his hands. He then did the gentlemanly thing and stepped to the side, coyly opening the back door for her.

Adrian lifted her brow. "I hope you're opening that door for yourself," she smirked. "Because _I'm_ driving!" She hauled herself into the driver's seat without further ado and honked the horn a couple times and then began to jerk the wheel, grinning like an idiot the entire time. "What I wouldn't give to have one of these," she purred.

"I can just see you taking out pedestrians," Richard laughed into her ear, having climbed into the backseat, pulled down the glass, and poked his head out.

"I'll start with your father."

"I should love to see that!"

Adrian suddenly turned around in the seat and only then realized just how close their faces were. Her breath hitched and she leaned in as though to kiss him.

Just as Richard closed his eyes, readying himself for her kiss, he felt her arms lurch around his neck and found himself falling into the opposite side of the backseat. One look over her sloping back made him realize that she had her shoes pressed against the wheel, using it as leverage to push herself inside. Richard slid his arms under Adrian's and locked his hands together against the curve of her back, then he braced his feet against the opposite seating area and pushed them which allowed him to yank Adrian in the back seat. They landed with an _oofgh_. "You keep ending up on top of me."

Adrian clicked her tongue to the roof of her mouth. "Are you a betting man, Ricky?"

"Why?"

"Because I'd like to give you a little advice: you can bet that I will _always_ come out on top."

Richard lifted Adrian's hand to her mouth, kissing and nibbling at her fingers. "I'm okay with that." He sucked in a breath as she leaned into him, resting her chin on his shoulder. "It's only been two dates," he reminded her cautiously.

"Are you saying you don't want to do this?"

"No." Richard pressed his lips to her forehead. "I'm respecting your boundaries."

"Yeah?" she whispered breathily.

"Yeah."

"Then I am willing to make an exception." Adrian readjusted herself so that she was sitting on her knees on his lap. She raised her index finger. "You should know: you're not my first."

Richard studied the serious lines etched around her eyes. "You're not mine either."

Adrian tilted her head. "I believe you…despite the feeling I get that somehow that is not entirely true." She shook her head. "But I don't care." She ducked down, pressing her mouth to the curve of his neck like a vampyress.

"You're beautiful, you know that?"

"Touch me," she whispered. "Touch me and don't let go."

Richard pressed his hands to her hips, gliding them up her waist and torso until they were resting below her bust. He guided her down to him and kissed her again. "I'm not letting go."

And from that moment on they let themselves go: their bodies rose and swelled, crashing together like the great Atlantic waters churning and frothing from the very vessel they currently called home. The walls came crashing down and layer after layer peeled back until they were each a bundle of raw nerves; passion and heart filling the cabin of the car with steam so blistering that it made the heat from the ship's furnaces seem Arctic.

Adrian's hand shot up from the seat, grasping against the slick window in a manic haze, searching for any kind of traction. Suddenly it was joined by Richard's hand. His landed against the back of hers and his fingers melted between hers, gripping the edges of her palm. Adrian's responded by curling in on the tips of his and dragging his hand down, streaking the window with a dual set of streaky prints that were soon swallowed up again by the sea of their passion.

When the ebb finally came, Richard found himself strung out across the backseat. He felt the way his hair clung to his scalp like another skin and suspected it must look something like Adrian's, though hers had somehow managed to retain its curls and waves, despite being firmly slicked to her dewy olive skin. Something deep inside him was clicking into place. He knew it was sudden and it shouldn't be right, but it was. Looking at her was like looking out a window into the dawning of a brand new day with a golden horizon and he couldn't help himself: "I love you, Adrian."

"I love you too."


	9. Chapter Eight

**A/N: **I'm so glad people are still reading this story! I was a little worried that the last chapter wouldn't be that exciting (except for the end), but I'm thrilled to see the positive reception. And here's the next installment (a bit sooner than last time). ;)

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Eight**

"Did you mean what you said back there?" Adrian asked. White clouds swirled from her mouth with each syllable. They were now standing on the deck. The wooden panels beneath their feet were visibly wet and beginning to glaze over with ice.

"Did _you_?" Richard countered.

Adrian slid her arms around his neck. "This is crazy," she whispered.

Richard nodded. "That's why I trust it." He could feel the palpitations of her heart even through the layers of their clothes. "And when this ship docks, I'm getting off with you."

"Ricky-"

He touched her plump lips. "You told me not to let go: I'm not."

"So this is it then?" she asked, unable to keep the smile out of her voice. "Jumping in hand in hand, feet first?"

"I suppose so."

"And what about Zoe? And your father?"

"They can go to hell. Wealth doesn't make a person happy, Adrian. Easier, maybe, but not happier. Riches be damned! The only thing I want is you. And my mother."

"Where is your mother?"

"New York. I want to rescue her from my father. Are you willing to help me?"

Adrian chortled. "I think I have to be. I'm in too deep to let go now."

"Good." Richard cupped the side of her face, twining his hands through her still wet hair. But as they kissed, the boat beneath them began to shaking as if they were at the epicenter of an earthquake.

Adrian yelled and grabbed onto Richard as she lost her footing.

Richard caught her around the waist as the Latina started to fall. "I've got you!"

"What the devil is going on?"

"Look at that." Richard pointed his arm at the deck, spotted with chunks of white ice.

But Adrian was looking higher, at the titanic iceberg that the boat was grinding by. She could still feel the vibrations of the ship groaning and shuddering beneath her feet. It looked like some kind of sea demon, rising from the black depths. "My god…"

Richard curled his arm around Adrian's waist as they watched in silence until the Titanic had finally cleared the ice mammoth, then they both ran to the side of the boat and braced themselves against the edge.

Adrian fingered the sea water and ice chips on the railing beneath her fingers. It was too dark to see much of anything down below, but from what little she could make out, she didn't see any gaping wounds on the ship's walls.

"Well we're not sinking," Richard replied. "Looks like we dodged a bullet."

"Don't even joke about bullets."

Richard shut his mouth in silent apology. Wordlessly, he took her hand and tugged her around the ice chunks to a flight of stairs leading up to a higher deck. As they were coming up, a handful of uniformed men and Thomas Andrews were coming down.

"Boiler room six is flooded eight feet above the plate and the mail hold is worse. She's all buckled in the forward hold."

"Can you shore her up?"

"Not unless the pumps get ahead."

"Have you seen the damage to the mail hold?" Thomas questioned.

"No, she's already under water."

Adrian held out her arm to stop Richard at the top of the stairs. "This isn't good, Ricky."

Richard felt his stomach dropping faster than the temperature. "We need to warn Mr. Boykewich."

"And Grace!"

"I don't like it, but we can split up. Mr. Boykewich's room is a few doors down my father's. I do not want him to see you again."

"No. We're not splitting up. Look, we're not that far from the first class rooms anyway, so we'll go there first, warn Mr. Boykewich, and then work our way down to mine and Grace's room, okay? We're not leaving each other."

There was hesitation in his body language, but he acquiesced anyway. Roughly five minutes later they were in one of the first class hallways and Richard Adrian's hand tightly to keep her pressed to his side. "Just keep hold of my hand," he insisted. From their vantage point, he could already see several people moving in and out of his father's room and as they neared, Robert himself stepped out and they caught his attention instantaneously. Richard sucked in a breath and puffed out his chest, going ramrod straight.

Adrian felt Richard trying to push her to the other side of him so that he passed by his father instead of her, but she tightened her muscles and refused to be budged. She held her chin up high, refusing to look at the elder man, but pointedly moved in front of him. And, for the briefest of moments, she almost thought she felt his hand brush by her arm, but she ignored it, determined to not allow him to get the best of her.

"Change of heart, son?" Robert said, his lips tight. The sneer was evident in his voice, but he was doing his best to cover it up with a polished veneer.

"We're just here to see Mr. Boykewich," Richard replied tightly.

"Ah," Robert said, motioning his hand. "Wonderful. Mr. Boykewich happens to be in my cabin right now," he grinned, sweeping his hand towards the open door. A couple of men parted ways, making room for Adrian and Richard to enter and Robert stared them down, daring them to do just that.

Richard grit his teeth behind his lips and stepped forward, simultaneously pushing on Adrian's hand to alert her to stay back. He peered cautiously into the room and noticed that, indeed, Leo Boykewich was inside. He tugged at Adrian, giving her the go ahead.

As soon as Leo saw them, his face brightened. "Richard! Thank the heavens! Did your father tell you?"

"Tell me what?"

Robert closed the door behind them, making sure it was loud enough to cause Adrian to jump. "That I've been _robbed_."

"Robbed?" Richard swung around. "By whom?"

"I have a pretty good idea," Robert said, scowling at Adrian. "Search her!"

"Take your coat off, ma'am!"

"Hey!" Adrian hissed. "Get your hands off me!"

"Come now!" Leo interjected. "This must be a misunderstanding, Adrian can't be responsible!"

Richard stepped in front of the men. "Leave her alone! That coat's mine, I gave it to her!"

The men pushed Richard aside, one restraining Adrian from behind while the other began to check her pockets. Suddenly he lifted his hand from her left pocket and held up the _Le Coeur de la Mer_. "Is this it?"

Richard's eyes swelled as he saw the blue diamond, no longer attached to its staff.

Adrian shook her head vehemently. "Ricky, _no!_ They're setting me up! You know! I was with you the whole time!"

"So you admit to being in my room?" Robert pounced.

"I did not take that diamond! You saw me put it back in the safe!"

Richard winced. In fact, he _hadn't_ seen her put it back in the safe. He'd asked her to put it back for him, while he's written the note to his father. He looked to his father, who was gloating in satisfaction, then to Leo, who seemed as hopelessly conflicted by the evidence as himself. He briefly shut his eyes, trying to remember if when he had slipped his note into the safe, had he seen the diamond on the end of the staff or had he just seen the handle of the staff itself?

"Ricky!" Adrian cried. "Richard, tell them!"

"I – I – "

"They put it in my pocket! They had to. Ricky, you have to believe me!"

"It doesn't matter what he believes," Robert scowled. "The evidence suggests otherwise." He motioned his hand. "Take her out of my sight!"

"Richard!" she struggled. "Ricky! _Ricky!_"

Robert slapped a hand onto his son's shoulder. "You should be more careful about whom you associate with in the future, son."

As they hauled Adrian out of the room, a clambering of heels echoed down the hall and Zoe rushed in. "Richard!" she breathed, throwing her arms around his neck dramatically. "Thank God! I was so worried! Where have you been? When I heard your father had been burgled, I feared the worst!"

"You know I didn't do it!" Adrian screamed. "You _know_ me, Ricky!"

Zoe whirled around as Adrian's voice faded down the hallway. Her eyes gleamed like dark ice. "It was _her_ then?" she asked, looking to Robert for confirmation. "I _knew_ she was trouble!"

"Not to worry, Zoe, I have everything in order now." Robert touched Zoe's arm. "Why don't you give me a few moments alone with my son and we'll meet you shortly back at your room?"

Zoe smoothed her skirts and composed herself. "Yes, of course, Mr. Underwood." She slid one bony hand to the underside of Richard's chin and up around the back of his neck, using it to pull herself to her tiptoes and kiss his lips. "Don't be too long, dear."

Once Zoe and the other men, including Leo, had cleared out of the room, Richard found himself standing alone, listening to the clicks and clanks of his father's safe as the elder man returned the _Le Coeur de la Mer_to its hiding place in the next room. When he heard the safe door shut, he stood and braced himself as Robert appeared in the doorway. The endlessly black, hollow look in his eyes made Richard feel like he was suddenly in a dream where he was falling and couldn't wake up. He wanted to turn and run.

Before he got the chance, Robert was next to him, hurling a fist into Richard's stomach. The latter doubled over, curling his hands around his belly. The next thing he knew, he was on his knees and tears were bleeding between the cracks of his lashes. He felt Robert grab him by the collar of his shirt and jerk it like he was leading a dog by a leash. Richard bared his teeth, still reeling from the pain in his stomach. _"Don't touch me!"_

"It's a little late for that." Robert released Richard's collar and grabbed him by the chin, forcing the latter's gaze up at him. "You bedded that little whore, didn't you?" Silence. _"Answer me!"_

"Screw you!"

Robert backhanded Richard across the face of his face and the younger man last his balance and skittered backwards to the ground. Robert reared his leg back and smashed it into his son's side. "Get up! Get up!" he screamed, angling his leg to kick him again.

Richard scuttled back and grabbed onto the leg of a chair, using it to pull himself into a standing position. His eyes began to roam the room, looking for anything he could use as a weapon.

Robert advanced on Richard again, this time grabbing his arm and twisting it behind the younger man's back. As Richard cried out, Robert shoved him up against the wall. "You've gotten too big for your britches, _son_. I think it's time you had a little reminder of how hard it is to be a man in the world!"

Every muscle in Richard's body went ridged as he felt Robert reach around to the front of his waist, grabbing for the zipper on the front of his pants. Then a double knock thumped against the door and Richard's head whipped around in horror.

"Mr. Underwood!"

Robert pulled his hand back as the door burst open. "Not now!" he shouted. "We are busy!"

"Sir, I've been told to ask you to please put on your life belts and come up to the-"

"I said: _Not. Now._"

"I'm sorry to inconvenience you, Mr. Underwood, but it's Captain's orders! Now_ please_, dress warmly, it's quite cold out tonight! Now, may I suggest: top coats and hats?"

"This is ridiculous!" Robert scowled, finally releasing Richard's hand and moving away from his son.

Richard flexed his burning fingers to make sure nothing was broken and eased his arm back into an agreeable position. He let his breath draw slowly out of his lungs as the man who had barged in returned from their closet with two puffy white life belts. Richard caught his eye.

"Sir," he smiled, blissfully ignorant of the scene he'd just interrupted. "I'm sure it's just a precaution."

"I – I'm sure," Richard agreed. He reached for one of the life belts, but suddenly a hand came down on his, smacking it away.

"I'm sure the Captain is just being overly cautious," Robert intervened. "We won't be needing those silly things this evening." He motioned to the door. "But we appreciate your services, you can go now." He looked pointedly at his son. "We have other – more _important_ – matters to address."

"I'd like to see what all the commotion is about," Richard bit back.

The man laid the life belts on a chair, looking decidedly uncomfortable. "I need to tell the other rooms," he said, quietly excusing himself. As he reached the door, Zoe, flanked by two maids dressed in the life belts, pushed in around him. He nodded politely to her and disappeared out the door.

"Richard," Zoe intoned. "What's going on? We were just told to put – " she motioned her hand disgustedly towards the life belts "–_those_ on."

"I don't know," Richard said, thankful just this once for her presence. He moved to her and made a show of wrapping his arms around her, all the while looking at his father, though Zoe seemed oblivious to the tension. "But I say we should take a trip downstairs to find out, shouldn't we, _father_?"

Robert grit his teeth. "Fine," he snapped. "If it will sooth Zoe's mind, we will."

Richard ushered his fiancé out of the room as quickly as possible. His breaths were still ragged from the slug to his gut but he was trying to push past the pain without calling too much attention to it.

"Are you all right, Richard?" Zoe queried.

Richard felt his father's eyes burning into his back and refused to give him the satisfaction of turning around. "Fine. Just a little chilled, that's all." He winced a little as she looped her arm into his as they descended the stairs and found it filled with first class passengers, most of whom were wearing their life belts.

"Son!" Leo's voice rang out. "What on Earth is going on here? You've got us all dressed up here and now we're cooling our heels!"

"Sorry, Sir! L – let me go and find out!"

Richard opened his mouth to call out to Leo as the man he'd just spoken to – more like a boy, actually – darted past him up the stairs. However, to his dismay, Leo didn't seem to notice him in all the commotion and took off in the opposite direction. "Mr. Bo-"

"Damn English!" Robert bellowed, pushing a man out of his path. "Doing everything by the goddamn book!"

"Now, now, there's no need for language, Mr. Underwood," Zoe half jokingly scolded. Once off the stairs she released Richard's arms and turned abruptly to her maids. "Return to my room and turn the heaters on. I'm feeling a little parched and I require tea when I return."

"Yes, ma'am."

Richard was shifting his eyes back and forth, taking in the room and the exits and trying to plot a way to slip out unnoticed when Thomas Andrews caught his eye. He glided over to the man and noted how lost and out of sorts he looked. Richard grabbed him by the arms. "Mr. Andrews! I saw the iceberg and…and I see it in your eyes. Please: tell me the truth."

There was a beat. Then: "The ship will sink."

Adrian's face flashed before Richard's eyes. "Are you certain?"

"Yes. In an hour or so, all this will be at the bottom of the Atlantic."

Zoe's face blanched. _"What?"_

Richard suddenly realized Robert and Zoe had crowded around him to listen.

"Please, tell only who you must. I don't want to be responsible for a panic." Thomas's eyes lingered on Richard, then panned to Zoe. "And get to a boat, quickly! _Don't wait!_" He looked directly at Richard again. "You remember what I told you about the boats, don't you?"

"Yes," Richard said. His mind was already racing to find a way to get Adrian – and Grace – onto a boat before there were none left to be had. "I understand." But, he realized raggedly, before he could even think of doing that, he had to figure out where Adrian had been taken first.


	10. Chapter Nine

**A/N: **I got a very polite review last chapter asking me if I would write another version of this featuring Ramy instead of Radrian. Since it was a guest review I can't answer it directly, so I will say that while I appreciate that someone likes my writing enough to ask, I have very strong feelings about Ramy and therefore Ramy is one of a handful of pairings I will not write fanfictions for. I'm sorry, but I'm very firm on this issue.

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Nine**

Richard turned abruptly to Zoe. As shallow and miserable a human being she was, he still felt a primal urge to help her. "You need to get a life belt and get to a boat immediately!"

Zoe stared blankly at him. "You sound as if you're not coming with me."

"Then you are hearing me correctly. Finally."

"But-"

"Don't be an idiot, Richard!"

Richard whirled around with a raised fist before he even realized he'd curled it. "You fucking stay away from me!" he bellowed so loudly that Zoe shrank against the wall, cowering like a kicked puppy.

"Richard!" Thomas spoke, trying to intervene.

Richard reared back his arm as if to punch his father right in the jaw, then pulled his arm back slowly. "Take Zoe to the boats. I have other business to attend to."

Robert curled the fists at his sides, but with so many other people around, he offered his hand to Zoe. "Come with me," he said through grinding teeth. "Clearly, my son is too unstable right now."

Zoe grabbed Robert's hand and scampered behind him for protection from the feral look in Richard's eyes.

Richard shook his head in disgust. "I wouldn't hide behind him if I were you. I'd watch your backside, too." He waited impatiently until Zoe had managed to coax Robert up the stairs. Once they were gone, he quickly turned to Thomas. "Quick, you have to tell me: where would the Master-at-Arms take someone under arrest?"

"Richard, you need to get to the deck!"

"With all do respect, Mr. Andrews: I don't bloody care what you or my father or anyone else has to say to me right now. I need to find Adrian!"

"You have to take the elevator to the very bottom, make a left, go down the crewman's passage, right, left again at the stairs, and finally go through the long corridor until you find the third door from the end!"

"Thank you. Thank you!" Richard threw his arms around Thomas and hugged him fiercely.

"May God be with you," Thomas said.

"I wish you the best, Mr. Andrews." Richard paused for a moment, taking a good long final look at Thomas, then he tore off in the direction of the elevators. After having run so fast and so far from his father with Adrian just hours before, he'd assumed that he'd be wiped in no time, but the adrenaline snaking through his veins made him feel like an Olympian.

Richard reached the elevators with little resistance, only to be told that they were off limits. "I need to get down there!"

"Nobody's allowed!" the operator insisted.

Richard thought back to the effect that his anger had had on Zoe and decided to employ it again. He slapped his hands onto the operator's chest and bulldozed him into the elevator. "You will take me to the bottom floor!" He could feel his face flushing and the veins in his neck swelling beneath his skin. He could almost imagine popping one they were so thick.

The operator, having turned sheet white, scrambled to direct the elevator downwards. As they passed level after level, the noise from above faded out, replaced only by the grinding of the lift gears. Then they heard something that sounded like sizzling and before they knew it, water was gushing in at their feet and a blink later, it was up to their knees. The operator screamed and lunged for the controls.

"No!" Richard pushed through the water to the gates and began to rip them open until he could get out.

"Sir, no! I – I won't wait!"

"Then go!" Richard looked back and forth. He knew he'd landed too soon so he broke into a run towards the stairs and took two flights down until he came upon the crewman's passage. He took a left, right, and left again at the stairs as instructed. With the water at his knees, he was finding it increasing hard to run down the flickering hallway. "Adrian! Adrian!"

"Ricky? Ricky, I'm here! I'm down here!"

A rattling, metal on metal, punctuated the sound of Adrian's voice and he realized he'd been going down the hallway in the wrong direction. He turned quickly and began to pound the other way. "Adrian! I'm here, I'm coming for you!"

"Ricky!"

Richard arrived breathlessly at the third door from the end and pummeled through it to find Adrian standing on a wooden chair trying to keep herself above water. He realized with a ample infusion of loathing that she was handcuffed to a pipe and judging by the cuts on her face, he suspected that his father had probably paid the men to rough her up. "Adrian, thank god!" He threw his arms around her and kissed her face and forehead.

"I'm glad you're happy to see me," she laughed miserably. "But if you're really happy, I'd suggest you get over to that cabinet and find me the little silver key that will unlock these!"

Richard nodded briskly and sloshed through the water to the cabinet. But after sweeping the cabinet thrice and then throwing off the non-silver keys he finally realized, "They're all brass!"

Adrian blanked. "Uh – uh, well, look over there in that drawer!"

Richard flipped around and began to empty the drawers from the desk.

"Richard."

"What?" He suddenly stopped and cocked his head. "Wait, did you just call me 'Richard'?"

"Yeah," she chuckled. "Uhm…how did you find out he was lying?"

"Because he's a lying bastard…and I'm just a little slow. I'm so sorry, Adrian!"

Richard threw the drawer into the water and moved on to each and every other piece of furniture in the room. The water was up to his thighs by the time he realized he'd exhausted all leads and looked guiltily towards Adrian. "There is no key."

Adrian sucked in a sharp breath. "Then we'll have to improvise, won't we?" She nodded towards the door. "Go find help."

Richard hesitated, then moved to Adrian and kissed her. "I'll get you out of here, I promise!" He turned and ran back out the way he'd come, back through the water, and up the stairs until he was in a dry hall. It was desolate though and even darker than before. It occurred to him that moving around was like walking through a ghost town. Even the groaning noises that the ship was making as the Titanic was fighting against her Atlantic mistress mirrored those of ghosts and goblins and those that went bump in the night. "Help! Somebody, anybody! I need help!" He collapsed against the wall, shivering and yet simultaneously burning up. "I need help," he whispered. "Adrian needs help."

The lights shut off and Richard heard the ship's belly growl like a hungry orphan. He couldn't see a thing and it suddenly occurred to him that he'd lost. They had lost. He had left her and they were both going to die horribly and alone because of it. And then just like that, the lights were back. He heart clanged against his ribs. "I'm coming back, Adrian!" Help or no, he was going back, because if they were going to die, it would be together!

Richard pushed off the wall and went running again, trying to figure out his way back to her. When he got to the end of the hall he stopped, wondering if he had turned himself around again. Then his breath hitched: on the wall, painted in crimson, was a glass box containing an emergency axe. He angled his elbow and plowed it into the glass, shattering it everywhere, then he took off, axe in hand. Ten minutes later he found the stairs again, only this time it was drowned in rushing aquamarine water. He slowly marched down them, holding the axe as though a sea monster might pop out to attack him, and nearly stopped breathing when he pushed forward into the fray. It was so high he had to alternate between using the axe and his hands to pull himself along the pipes on the ceiling because his feet no longer touched the floor.

Several minutes and some dog paddling later, Richard pushed into the holding room again. The water in that room was now mid-waist. "This is the best I could do!"

Adrian eyed him warily. "Heh," she laughed nervously. "Rick, you ever swung an axe before?"

"No."

"Okay." Adrian nodded towards a cabinet. "Why don't you get a few swings in over there to get a feel for it, huh?"

"Good idea!"

As she watched him swing and hit about five totally different spots, she cringed inside. "Well, I'm not sure how many pieces I'll be in when we're done, but why don't you get on over here? I'd rather get out without a hand instead of not getting out at all."

Richard winced. "Do you trust me?"

Adrian sighed. "You know I do." She ducked her face behind the pipe and pressed the chain of her cuffs tight against the pipe. As she watched him raise back the axe she yelled, "Wait! Stop, uh, Ricky…hold it right there."

"Wha – why? What's wrong?"

"Spread out your hands a bit." When he did so, she smiled. "Okay, now remember when I was showing you how to dance in your room?"

"What about it?"

"Think of the axe like a sharp staff."

"And get a feel for it," he nodded, suddenly remember her previous instructions. "Let it consume me." Richard closed his eyes, feeling the weight of the axe bearing down against his palms. It almost seemed ridiculous to bond with an axe, but at the same time, his head was clearing out. He pictured how Adrian had wheeled the staff and imagined himself doing the same with the axe.

"You good?"

"I'm good." He sucked in a final breath as she hid her head again and then he swung down. The hit sounded like a pair of giant jaws clamping onto a bone. When he opened his eyes again he saw no blood. In fact, he saw that he'd hit the mark and Adrian was holding her cuffed – but freed – hands in the air. He dropped the axe onto the desk and embraced her. "Thank you! Thank you!" he said, not even sure who he was really saying it to.

Adrian smothered him in a passionate kiss. Partly happy to be free, partly happy to still be alive, partly happy to be in one piece, and completely happy to be with him. But reality set it not a moment later: "We have to get out of here!" She grabbed the axe and pointed it towards the door. "Go!"

Richard darted out into the hallway and stopped so suddenly that he felt Adrian walk into him. His face drained. "That's the way out." The problem was that it was also surging with water.

Adrian looked down in the opposite direction. "Improvise!"

"I did all the improvising last time," Richard said. He pushed through the water behind Adrian, trying to keep talking so he wouldn't stop to think about how he was starting to freeze from the outside in. "It's _your_ turn!"

Adrian grabbed onto the railing of a staircase and used it to pull herself up. "I'm working on it!" The metal cuff on her wrist alternated between clanking and grinding against the railing as she climbed. When she got to the top, the water was no longer covering her, but instead up to her ankles. She looked up and down the hallway and then decided to go left because the water seemed to be flowing right. "This way!"

Richard swung up behind her and followed at her heels. Soaking wet and running seemed to be even colder than being in the water itself. He breathed heavily onto his vibrating hands. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

"Absolutely none." Adrian raised her axe. "But I guess we're about to find out!" And she slammed the axe down against a wall. "I'm improvising a short cut!"


	11. Chapter Ten

**A/N: **Booyah, new chapter! I've been on a roll with this fic the last few days!

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Ten**

Adrian grabbed Richard by the wrist and held him back. "Do you hear that?"

"Hear what?"

"People." Adrian stepped forward cautiously, following a vague sound, like a colony of rats running around in an attic. Then she broke into a run to the end of the hallway. The sounds grew louder with each step. When she got to a door she swung it open and found a line of people. "Ricky, over here!"

Adrian slid by a few people but nobody seemed to be paying attention to her. They were all talking, shouting, and crying in an array of different languages and dialects. She realized the further she went the thicker the groupings became, like a coiled body of a snake.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know." Adrian wormed her way through the passengers. Judging by their holey, smelly clothing, they were all like her: from the bowels of the ship. As she looked up the stairs which was utterly bottlenecked with bodies she could see people shaking and pounding against the gates.

"For God's sake, there are women and children down here! You have to let us through!"

"Jason!"

"What?"

Adrian pointed to the chocolate skinned man who was pressed to the grill of the gates. "I know him! That's Jason Treacy! Grace met him the first night we arrived! If he's here then maybe-"

"Adrian!"

The Latina felt tears welling in her eyes. It wasn't as if she'd forgotten Grace, in fact she'd thought of her abundantly while she'd been chained up, but with so much chaos going on, she had not allowed herself to think of where Grace was. Or _wasn't_.

"Thank God!" Grace breathed, throwing her arms around her friend. Tears were welling from the blonde's silver eyes. "I feared the worst!"

"I'm so glad you're okay!" Adrian squeezed Grace against her body. "But we'll have time for this later, when we're not fighting for our lives. What's going on up there?"

Grace shook her head in defeat. "We've been looking for a way to get up to the deck, but they've shut down all the elevators and locked the gates; they refuse to let us through."

"They have to!"

Grace shook her head. "I guess our price of admission wasn't high enough." She only then realized that Richard was standing nearby, listening. She looked between him and her friend. "What's he doing here?"

Adrian exchanged a look with Richard and said quickly, "The price of admission doesn't matter to him."

"Grace!" Jason barreled down the stairs. "It's hopeless that way, we have to – Adrian! You're alive!"

"So are you," the Latina agreed.

"Jason, Richard. Richard, Jason," Grace said quickly, motioning between the two men. "He's with Adrian."

"I'd say it's good to meet you, but I don't think we have time. We need to find another way out!"

"It's way too congested in here anyway," Adrian said. "Let's go back this way and see if we can find another stairway!" She muscled her way back through the passengers and into the hallway.

Grace looked up and down the hallway. "It's like a maze. How can we possibly find our way?"

"Hey!" Adrian said, grabbing the blonde by her shoulder. "You're supposed to be the hopeful one, okay? That's why our friendship works so well: your optimism – your faith – balances out my pessimism."

Grace sniffed and dabbed her nose with her sleeve. "You're right," she agreed. "I can't lose my faith in the Lord now. Godspeed ahead!"

"Good girl!"

"Look, there!" Everyone followed Jason's arm as he pointed to a couple of wet mice burrowing under a door. "Follow them!"

Grace grabbed for the door handle, only to find that it wouldn't budge. "Locked."

"Good thing I have a master key." Adrian swung the axe she was still carrying at the door three times before Richard finally kicked it in the remainder of the way. The door led them through what looked like a utility room ending with a door at the far back. Adrian wielded her axe even as she felt her arms growing tired and all too stretched out and broke through that door too, opening them up to a brand new hallway.

"Which way?"

"Your pick," the Latina replied, looking to her friend.

"R-right?"

"Right!" Adrian blew down the hallway, pushing Grace and Jason in front of her. Occasionally she would feel Richard's shoes accidentally step on her heels behind her until Jason skidded to a stop.

"Here!" he yelled, motioning his arm for Grace, Adrian, and Richard to run up the stairs where a sign indicated would lead to the next deck. As he followed up behind them, however, he could hear a few people arguing with one of the crewmen behind the gate and it was déjà vu.

"Just go back to the main stairwell and everything will be sorted out there!"

"_Lasst uns durch!"_

"_Cabahir! Cabhraigh linn!"_

"Liar!"

"It _will _get sorted out, just go back-"

Jason pushed through the crowd and grabbed onto the gate. His eyes focused on the crewman's. "Sir, open the gate."

"Do as I've told you: go back to the main stairwell!"

"Don't you understand?" Grace yelled, pushing through the crowd to join Jason's side. "The boat is flooded and we can't get back to the main stairwell! We're all going to die if you don't let us through right now!"

"It's no use!" Adrian yelled. "Those bastards are not going to let us through. We're going to have to get through ourselves!" She shoved through the crowd and raised her axe. "Grace, Jason, step away!" She caught the bulging eyes of the crewman on the opposite side as her friends moved out of her line of fire.

"Put that down!"

"Over my dead body!" She quickly smashed the axe against the gate. The metals shrieked as they met and the gate ended up bent, but not broken. She slammed the axe down again, but still, the gate held strong.

"Stop it! I order you to stop this instant!"

Suddenly Richard waved his arm. "Jason, come help me!"

Jason bolted to Richard's side as Adrian continued to onslaught on the gate. "What do you need?"

"Help!" he said, bending down to begin shaking a bench. "I think Adrian needs a little backup."

As Jason and Richard began to shake and ply the bench free, several other men clued into their plan and crowded around them to help.

Grace began to wave her hands to the women and children. "Get out of the way! Out of their way!" she yelled, pushing women against the wall and grabbing children by the hands and pushing them behind herself.

"Adrian, _move!_"

"Since you're trying to save our lives, I'm gonna let that tone go!" Adrian hollered back, plying her axe out of the gate and stepping over to stand by Grace and the other women.

"No! Stop!" the crewman shrieked. "You're insane!"

"The only one insane here is the one who would let innocent people die on account of protocol!" Richard hollered. He charged with the surrounding men, bashing the intense wooden bench into the gate. Two of the metal bars that Adrian had been hitting on broke. "Again!" The second time they punched a hole through the gate and by the third time, they blew the gate completely out of the wall, enough for people to begin climbing through.

"Let's go!" Richard said, grabbing for Adrian's hand.

Adrian pushed Grace and a couple of children ahead and then took Richard's hand. She climbed onto the bench and jumped over it, catching up with Grace and Jason with Richard once again on her heels.

"You can't do this!"

Adrian stopped and raised her eyebrows. "Watch me!" She flung her fist into the man's face, knocking him to the ground and then took off with her three companions.

"I can't believe you just did that!" Grace gasped.

Adrian grinned. "Someone had to!"

Suddenly Richard stopped.

"Ricky, come on!"

Richard shook his head. "No, wait. I know where we are now! Come on, this is the way to the deck!"

Adrian felt her hands slipping around the axe as she ran. Suddenly she stopped, gasping. She began to cough, her eyes were tearing up, and she dropped the axe to the ground. Her body had had enough.

"Adrian!" Grace stopped to tend to her friend. She pressed her hand to the back of Adrian's forehead. "We're almost there," she urged.

"I – know, I kn – ow," Adrian coughed. "I just…exhausted. I'm so tired." She reached for the axe again, but Richard grabbed her hand.

"Leave it! We have to get to the boats!"

"But what if we need it?"

"Trust me."

Adrian wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "This way?"

"Yeah. Here, lean on me," he said, slipping Adrian's arm around his shoulders and his arm around her back. "We are going to make it through this, I promise!"

Once they stepped onto the deck Grace shuddered and began to rub the thread fabric of her dress. Her breath came out in long white ribbons. "It's so cold out here I think my eyes are freezing in their sockets!"

Jason tore off his coat. "Here," he said, wrapping it around Grace's shoulders.

"No!" Grace refused. "You need it!"

"You need it more," Jason said, urging her to put her arms into the sleeves.

Grace smiled feebly and put on the jacket over her life belt. She then leaned on her tippy toes and kissed Jason. "Thank you!"

Meanwhile, Richard's eyes were searching desperately for the boats, but he didn't see them hanging from the side of the ship. "They're gone!"

"There have to be some left. We didn't come all this way for nothing!"

"Richard? Adrian? Is that you?"

Richard turned and saw Leo flagging him down with a white handkerchief. "Mr. Boykewich!" He tugged Adrian and motioned to Grace and Jason. "This way!" As he approached the older man he yelled: "Why haven't you gotten to a boat yet?"

Leo smiled sadly, his eyes on Grace and Adrian. "There are a couple more boats straight forward," he said, dodging the question. "Come, son, I'll lead you!"

Richard followed Leo without protest. The fact that Leo had ignored his question was temporarily forgotten as his hope swelled, realizing that in just minutes, he, Adrian, and her friends might be on their way to safety.

The boats in question were nearly all the way on the other end of the deck. By the time they got there a crowd so thick had gathered that it seemed like a red anthill: were it not for the ropes holding up the boat, Adrian wouldn't have even been able to see it and know that it was there.

As they began to bustle their way through, Richard noticed Leo wasn't following them. "Mr. Boykewich, come on!"

Leo shook his head sadly.

"Why not?"

Before the older man could answer, two gunshots pierced the air and much of the noise and screaming in the immediate crowd fell to a momentary hush. "Women and children _only!_"

Leo bowed his head and mouthed the words: 'I'm sorry.'

Richard held onto Adrian's arms. He looked helplessly to Jason.

"I can't get on without you!" Grace said, her eyes pleasing with Jason's.

"I'll stay with them, you go and check the other side!" Richard yelled.

Jason kissed Grace's lips quickly. "I'll be right back!"

"Jason, no!"

"I'll be right back!" he insisted, then he shook of her hands and squeezed out of the crowd.

"Da-ddy!"

"You go with Mummy! Hold her hand, don't let go!"

"Daddy, no!"

"There will be another boat for the daddies," the little girl's father insisted. "This one is for the mummies and the children." He kissed his daughter's head just before one of the crewman ripped her out of the man's arms and he watched helplessly as his daughter was shoved down onto her mother's lap, screaming and holding her hands out to him.

The man's wife was sobbing. She had one arm wrapped around another girl and one arm holding her daughter in her lap. She didn't say anything; she didn't have to.

The man pressed his fingers to his lips, kissed them, and held his hand out in a stopping motion. 'I love you,' he mouthed.

'I love you too,' she mouthed back.

Adrian shook her head, squirming in Richard's arms. "I'm not getting on that boat without you!"

"You have to!"

"No! I won't! We're in too deep, remember?"

Richard looked across to Grace, who was hugging herself and softly sobbing. "Look at her. She's your best friend, Adrian. If they refuse to let Jason and I on, are you going to refuse to get on with her?"

Adrian grit her teeth. "She won't get on either."

"Yeah? You're persuasive. I know that first hand. And if I were a betting man, I'd bet you could get her on that boat." At that moment, Jason came running back and Richard looked up expectantly. "What'd you find?"

Jason hesitated. "There's another boat on the other side of the ship."

"Then that's where we'll go!" Adrian said urgently.

Jason shook his head. "No, you have to get on here."

"What? _Why?_"

"It's almost full," Jason said, all the while his eyes on Richard. "I - I got them to agree to hold seats for Richard and I, but we have to hurry! So that means we're going to have to split up!"

"You two get on here then," Adrian said. "Richard and I will catch the other side."

"No! It's – it's men only. You have to get on here. Please!"

Grace sniffled and shook her head. "You'll find me?" she whispered, clinging to Jason.

"I'll find you!" He proceeded to hug her and kiss her and then pushed her towards the crewman. "Now go!"

"You too, Adrian." Richard urged her forward. "We'll meet up as soon as possible!"

Adrian felt her legs shaking as she watched the crewman help Grace onto the boat. She felt like vomiting at the mere thought of getting on without Richard. But, as Grace patted the seat beside her, she took a sharp breath and allowed the crewman to help her aboard. She reached out and grabbed Richard's hand before sitting down.

"Lower away!"

The boat lurched as it began to descend and she felt Grace grab onto her hand. She squeezed back achingly and looked up at Richard and Jason as they loomed over the edge. A brilliant white flare passed overhead, lighting up the sky behind them. It looked beautiful, deceptively beautiful, and seemed to light them up like angels. In the space of a single heartbeat, she knew they were.


	12. Chapter Eleven

**A/N: **I want to give a special shout out to **I Would Rather Be Writing** because s/he has been such a faithful reader of this story. Thank you so much for your continued support! :D

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Eleven**

"Thank you," Richard whispered.

"I don't deserve it," Jason said monotonously.

"Yes you do. I'm not stupid. I know there's no boat on the other side."

"There is," Jason replied quietly. "But they're only taking women and children too."

Richard nodded. "I'm not afraid of dying," he said quietly. "There was a time when I prayed for it. But I don't think I could live with myself if I hadn't gotten Adrian on that boat."

Jason nodded. "I hope God can forgive me for lying to her," he said, never once taking his eyes off Grace.

Down below, Adrian heard Grace let out a wracked sob. She pulled her hand away from her friend and hugged her fiercely. "It's okay, Gracie. You're going to be okay. Just don't forget me."

"Adrian, wha –" Suddenly Grace screamed as she watched her friend stand up and lunge over the edge of the boat.

"Stay back!" Adrian yelled. Her arms clutched the edge of the railing and she kicked her feet out of the boat.

"Adrian!" Richard screamed from above.

"Adrian!" Grace tried to get up from her seat, but someone pushed her back as they got up to try and help Adrian.

Adrian, however, slashed her feet through the air to keep anyone from pulling her back inside. Instead, she tried to use the upper body strength she had to pull herself over the railing, without success. Then three people moved forward, still on the boat, and began to pull her over the side just when she began to think that she couldn't hold on much longer. All the while she heard Grace's and Richard's shouts from above and behind. Once she'd gotten back over, she turned and saw Grace's terrified face drowning in the crowd of bodies. "I'm sorry!" she yelled before turning and running as fast as she could.

"_No!"_

Above, Richard saw Adrian's head disappear onto the lower deck. "Stupid, stubborn woman!" he growled. "I have to go find her!" He started to leave, only to realize Jason wasn't following him. "Come on!" As he passed Leo, the man took his top hat off and Richard slowed down just enough to listen to what the man had to say.

Leo grabbed him by the arm and quickly took off his life belt and handed it to the young man. "Good luck."

Richard hesitated. "I can't take this."

"You can and you will. Now go! Find that stubborn girl!"

Richard's hand began to shake as he accepted the life belt. "Thank you."

"You're welcome."

After a beat, Jason caught up with him. "I just needed to make sure Grace didn't follow her lead!"

"She knew we were lying about the boat," Richard realized. He cursed under his breath. "She only got on that goddamn boat to make sure Grace did!" He smacked his hand to his forehead. "Why am I so thick?"

Jason chased after Richard across the deck, weaving in and around frantic and sobbing people, down a flight of stairs, and onto the lower outer deck. "There she is!"

"Ricky! Ricky!"

"Adrian!" Richard yelled. He could feel his throat constricting as she ran into his arms. "You stupid woman! I can't believe you did that!"

Adrian clung to Richard's neck as he swung her around. "I couldn't leave you two idiots," she whispered. She shook her head, the whites of her eyes snaked with red. "There isn't another boat, is there?"

Richard and Jason looked at each other. "No."

"Not one that we can get on anyway."

Adrian nodded. "Well I'm persuasive," she said, pointedly looking at Richard. "I'm going to make sure we all get off this nightmare and meet up with Grace."

"That's a lot to expect, Adrian."

"I'm not expecting, I'm _doing_. Now come on!"

"Wait!" Richard held Adrian back and shoved the life belt at her. "Put this on!"

"But – where did you even get this?"

"It doesn't matter, just put it on!"

"You don't have one –"

"Yeah, but I'm not the one stupid enough to go jumping out of life boats."

Adrian glared but finally agreed and secured herself into the life belt. When it was tied on around her she motioned her arm. "Okay, here's the plan: when I was sitting down there on that bench, it occurred to me that we have at least one more option…it's just a little labor intensive."

"What are you talking about?"

"On our way to this end of the boat, I remember seeing another boat chained up on the top deck. Maybe it's still there? It wasn't on ropes yet, but if we could get it off-"

"We could all get on!"

Adrian tugged Richard's sleeve impatiently. "Come on! This way!" However, by the time they had reached the area that Adrian had seen the boat at, people had already gotten the boat down and were rigging it up to ropes. Her stomach plummeted at the crowd that had gathered in anticipation.

"There's got to be at least a hundred people here," Jason whispered.

"And the boat only holds sixty-five."

"Get back!" one of the crewman was screaming. A silver gun was locked in his hands and he was waving it threateningly at the crowd. "Get back, I say! Get back!"

"Give us a chance!" another man bellowed. "Give us a chance to live!"

"I said: _Stay. Back._"

"You have no right to deny us a chance to live!"

Adrian shoved through the pulsating bodies, making way for Richard and Jason to follow behind her. She managed to get close enough to see the confrontation.

"Women and children only!" another crewman called out.

The first crewman raised his arm again and fired off his pistol. "I'll shoot anyone who dares to come forward!" A second later, the man he'd been arguing with, took a leap towards the boat and he aimed his handgun and fired.

Adrian's hand flew to her mouth and a hollow send echoed through the crowd as the man toppled to the deck.

Without thinking, Jason rushed towards the fallen man and a second gun shot rang out. Jason fell instantly, just feet from the other man, and a bloodied spot began to form brightly against his white life belt.

Adrian screamed and shoved several people out of the way.

"Adrian, no!"

The man raised his gun again, only to realize the person coming forward this time was a woman. He shakily pulled back as Adrian knelt down beside Jason and placed her hand over the bloodied hole. He staggered back when she lifted her head, eyes dripping.

"_¡Bastardo!"_

Richard felt the muscles in his body twitching erratically. He wanted to run to Adrian and Jason, but he feared another gunshot to himself or someone else and he feared more than anything, putting Adrian in harm's way. He watched, transfixed, as the crewman staggered backwards to the side of the deck, out of the way of the trail of blood flowing from beneath Jason's body, and lifted the gun to his own temple. Richard briefly flashed back to that first night he'd spent on the Titanic, when he'd been ready to do the same thing. As the gun went off, Richard turned his head away and heard the _plop_ of the man falling over the edge into the Atlantic. A second later, he bolted to Adrian's side, embracing her as she cried over Jason's body.

Blood was gushing from Jason's mouth and a calm, surreal look was in his mahogany eyes. "P – pro – tec – t…pro- te – ch –"

Adrian draped her hand over Jason's mouth and stroked the side of his chin. Her head bobbed back and forth emphatically. "Grace will be f - fine," she choked. Tears fell, hitting Jason's life belt and smearing into the blood.

"We'll protect her," Richard agreed, reaching for Jason's hand. "I promise you: Grace will be fine."

Jason tried to nod, but his head went limp in Adrian's hands; his eyes still frozen on her.

Adrian shuddered and sobbed, lifting her crimson hands from Jason's head.

Richard reached around Adrian and brushed his hand over Jason's face, shutting his eyes. He stood and helped Adrian to her feet, backing her away from the grizzly scene. "We can't get on here."

Adrian shook her head into his chest. She wiped her hands onto her skirt but her skin still seemed permanently stained pink. "This side of the ship is sinking," she said, trying to compartmentalize her emotions. "We – we have to get to the other side."

"That's a long run."

"We have to try," Adrian breathed. She watched her words dissolve into ice crystals and disappear into the blackness of the night. "We told Jason we'd protect Grace. And goddamnit, she will be protected!"

Richard weaved his hand into Adrian's. "Run!"

If it hadn't been so terrifying, it might have been like running through a circus fun house. Adrian couldn't trust her body to do what she wanted because every time she tried to order it around, the boat would shift, and she along with it. Several times she found herself thrown into Ricky or vice versa. Sometimes even other objects or passengers who were also running for their lives. At one point they even stopped beside the railing near the front of the boat and looked over the side: it dripped with people who were falling or jumping off. The crashes as they hit the water made Adrian suspect that was what Death's footsteps sounded like.

Richard urged her along. He couldn't afford to watch the deaths; he couldn't bear to think of Adrian being one of them. As he dragged her up the rapidly tilting deck, they passed a priest who was diligently reciting prayer. Richard thought he looked calm enough; ready to meet the maker that he so fervently believed in. There was a part of him who wanted to feel bad for the man because he didn't believe there was any God. Not one that would let him live a life like the one he'd lived with Robert and not one who would kill so many innocent people so cruelly, like the ones that he witnessed dying horrible, violent deaths all around him.

Adrian felt the worn out soles of her shoes slipping against the wet, sloping deck. She stumbled once, twice, thrice. Each time Richard gripped her hand, pulling – sometimes dragging her – upright again. Suddenly the railing was in sight. It was almost impossible to reconcile the fact that the place they were now grabbing onto for dear life was the same place that he'd stood at not a day ago, kissing Richard and feeling like she was the Queen of the World.

As the railing craned further and further towards the sky, hundreds more people fell victim to gravity. Some let go willingly, finally accepting that they had lost. Others hung on until their fingers grew number or broke. The screams and cries permeated the air like a hot disease. Richard found his shoes slipping and sliding. He already knew that his arms wouldn't be strong enough to hold himself to the railing, much less him and Adrian. "Hook your feet!"

Adrian grit her teeth and swung her legs up with all her might. The heels of her shoes caught one of the bars and she struggled to keep her feet locked onto them. Then it occurred to her: "We need to be on the other side. We're being pulled down. If we can get onto the other side of the railing, we won't be exhausting ourselves to hold."

Richard pressed his lips to Adrian's cheek. "You're brilliant!"

As Adrian began to try and turn herself around, darkness enveloped them. There was an echoing _pop_ followed by a surprised hush as the lighting on the entire ship vanished. A sickening _crack_ followed. The sound reminded Adrian of the time her father had broken his arm. But it was bigger: a million million arms shattering in synch. And then a rush of frozen air as the end of the ship fell backwards through the air, plundering back into the water and knocking countless people overboard due to the sheer force. But almost as soon as it had settled, the end began to tilt again, this time with a speed that stole away her breath.

"Get over! Get over!" Richard yelled. He pushed against Adrian, straining to get her over before they both let go.

Adrian let her legs free and swung them, catching herself on the top bar enough to hoist herself over. She found herself on the other side and moved over allowing Richard enough room to do the same. Even as they pummeled towards the great Atlantic, Adrian felt a calm in the fact that she and Richard had made it this far. Maybe there was hope after all? And then she realized: "Ricky…this was where we first met. Where we first kissed."

Richard wrapped his arm around Adrian's back and pulled himself closer to her. "This was the first place I ever trusted anyone other than myself."

"Trust me now when I saw that this ship is going to suck us under and you're not wearing a life belt, Ricky. So do as I say: take my hand and kick like the whole world depends on you. And whatever you do: Don't. Let. Go." Adrian wrangled for his hand and once she found it, she stole her eyes away from the fast approaching water to look at him one more time.

"Never!"

"We're gonna make it, Ricky!" Adrian felt the spray of the water hit her face. "Breathe!"

And he did. His lungs burned right up until the moment his nose touched the water and then he held everything he'd taken in as the current pulled him under. Suddenly the paint of every night with his father came back to him, converging into one titanic memory, and corporealizing itself in the form of the form of the whole of the Atlantic ocean bearing down on him. The final blow was the moment he felt Adrian's fingers ripped from his own.


	13. Chapter Twelve

**A/N: **We all knew this chapter was coming…

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Twelve**

Bubbles sprayed from his mouth and nose and Richard could see them billowing up around his face and head as he felt himself being dragged further and further into the navy black abyss. Around him, he could see other people, some flailing and others just drifting downwards. Adrian's voice sung in his ears: _kick like the whole world depends on you._

Richard began to thrash his feet back and forth but it seemed impossible, like demons were clinging to his legs and keep them immobile. He began to pump his arms up and down as his chest constricted. He'd be running out of air any time now and if that didn't kill him, the knives of coldness would make him their Caesar. His thoughts returned to Adrian. She'd had on Leo's life belt, so he had to believe that she would still be somewhere on the surface. He pushed, kicked, and thrashed virulently.

When he was sure his longs were going to pop like overblown balloons behind his ribs he felt his face breach the top of the water and immediately sucked in as much frozen oxygen as he could. He began to dog paddle as he got his bearings. The panic set in: bodies were everywhere. Many alive and just as many dead. The screeches and sobs were deafening. "Adrian!" he yelled, lending his voice to the pandemonium. "Adrian! Where are you? Adrian!"

He paddled forward and a random hand shot out and smacked him in the face. His head went under and his mouth and nose filled with ice water. They burned as he bobbed back up to the surface, spatting and snorting them out. The fire in his nostrils and the back of his throat didn't dissipate but he pushed on. He'd just been through far worse. "Adrian! Adrian, tell me that you're out here!"

The more he maneuvered, the more frantic he became. He felt as though he were wading through arctic honey and his limbs were becoming increasingly entangled and more laborious to swish around. If he didn't get out of the water soon, he knew he was going to freeze to death right then and there. "Adr - ian!" he hacked. He swallowed quickly, wondering if his saliva was becoming to freeze in the back of his throat already.

"Ricky!"

The voice was distant, a pin prick in the masses, but it gave him hope. "Adrian! I'm over here!" He realized his limbs were shaking as he plowed forward against the water. "Adrian, I'm here!"

"Ricky!"

"Adrian!"

"Ricky!"

"Adrian!"

"Ricky!"

"Adrian!" His ability to move was growing less as he paddled towards her voice. "Adri- an."

"I'm here!" She was suddenly by his side, her lips shivering as she curled her arms around him. Adrian took his hand and slid it under the shoulder pad of her life vest. "Hold on," she instructed. "We have to get out of here!"

"Where is there to go?" he asked, clutching her life belt even though he couldn't quite feel himself actually doing it. He knew he was though, because he could see it.

"Away from the masses. Three people have already tried to drown me for my life belt." Adrian kicked her legs, pulling Richard along with her away from the bobbing swarms into an area with a lot of floating debris. She paused briefly, taking in their surrounds, and then pointed. "There! Kick, Ricky! Work with me!" She pursued a large floating piece of wood, that as they got close, they recognized as having once been a door. "Get on!"

"No, you!"

"Richard, _get on!_ You're the one without the life belt here!"

"It's colder in the water!"

"Yes! All the more reason for you to get on. Don't try to be a gentleman about this. You got your way last time." She pushed him, half heaving him onto the wood.

Richard scrambled on and moved over. "Get on, there's room enough for both of us."

Adrian attempted to jump up but the wood flipped, knocking both of them off.

Richard grabbed onto Adrian's life belt to keep himself from slipping beneath the water.

"I told you, it can only hold one!"

"No, we're going to share because I'm not taking it alone!" Richard blew white breath onto his hands. "Here," he said, grabbing onto one side of the wood. "You go to the other. It's a matter of balancing our weights: I'll climb on over on this side to the right, you climb on that side to the right, and it'll keep from flipping."

Adrian kicked around to the other side, skeptical of his plan. "On three: one. Two. Three!"

Richard jumped on as Adrian did and a rush of water moved onto the board with their sudden weight. He thought it was going to sink, but it eventually stabilized and he turned his head to look at Adrian. "I told you it was big enough for two." He held out his hand out to the middle of the wood and felt relieved when Adrian took it. "We're gonna make it."

Adrian nodded and rested her head against the wood. She gave him an upside down smile, but it was obvious that it was tainted by the goings on around them: the screaming, the splashing, the pleas, the crewman frantically whistling into the night.

Richard squeezed her hand. "We're going to see Grace again really soon." But as the time passed, no boats arrived.

There was no way of telling how long it had been, but at some point – and it seemed like a _very_ long time – it occurred to Adrian how quiet things had become. Aside from the occasional splash of water or distant voice, the only things she could hear were the clattering of her and Richard's teeth. "I think they should give us our money back after this?" she said, just to make sure she could still speak. When Richard didn't respond, she shook his hand. "Ricky?"

Richard's fingers moved beneath his, but barely, more along the lines of a twitch. "I l-love you."

Adrian shook her head and attempted to scoot further up but then she felt the door arch beneath her and she pushed back to even out the weight balance. "D-don't you d-dare!" she scolded. If she craned her neck enough, she could see that his lips were dark, almost black. "You j – just got aw – way from y-your father. Your life's j – just beg-g-ginning. You he-hear me?"

"I – I'm so – so c-c-c-old."

"N-o. You – you're n – not. We – we have to – to get to Gra – Gracie, 'member? Pro – protect her, f-for Ja – Ja-s-s-on. A – an y-yo-ur m-m-m-oth-er! Ju – ju – st thin – k of – of all the th – thing –sss we ha – have to-to do. Wh-what ab-b-bout the dr-uuums? I – I think you – sh-sh-shooo-uld be uh – uh drum-mer!" Adrian curled her feet closer to her chest, trying to get into a fetal position but her life belt was getting in the way. The ice that had begun to freeze on her clothes and the backs of her knees didn't help either. "You. A-a-re _not_ dying…here…t-tonight." She shook her wrist, banking the metal handcuff against the wood and cracking some ice that had frozen beneath it.

"I – I can't…" he whispered. "…f-feel m-my b-o-dy."

Adrian pulled her hand out of Richard's. Ice had begun to freeze between their fingers, partially fusing them together. He didn't seem to even notice that she'd taken her hand away. Her entire body ached with alternating numbness and then the shrill slices of knives as she rolled slightly, maneuvering enough to unfasten her life belt. It had become clear to her that he wasn't a very good swimmer when she'd found him dog paddling in the water and in the state that he was in, she knew that he'd probably sink like a rock if she were to even try and move him off the door. Her vision blurred and swayed as she squirmed herself out of the life belt and draped it over Richard, pushing it over his head as he just laid there like a wet rag.

Richard suddenly felt the minimal warmth of the life belt against the frozen tundra of his body. In his semi-conscious state, he had no idea why there was suddenly warmth there, much less that it was the life belt being strapped to him and warmed with Adrian's very own body heat. He closed his eyes, imagining his mother tucking him into bed when he was a boy, back before his father's visits to his room.

"R-Ricky?" Adrian shook his hand. "Rick – y!"

Adrian's voice burrowed at the back of his head. He suddenly felt something in his hair, touching his scalp and the soft places behind his ear. The tiny bit of heat that the life belt afforded him was working its way through his skin and sludgy blood and down to his brittle bones. "Ad-drian?"

"Yo – u are – are going to-to sur –v-v-v-v – ive." She needed to make it clear to him what she wanted, so she rubbed her lips feverishly and tried to speak as cleanly as possible. _"Promi-se. Me. Th-is."_

His mind was rooting around for something to hold on to. _Hold on._ That was what she wanted. He pried his eyes open against his frozen lashes, wincing at the piercing pain. Grace, his mother, Adrian. She was right: he had so much he still had to do. He rolled his eyes back into his head in an attempt to look up at her without moving his head.

Adrian scooted up the wood, just a bit, cautious of the movement beneath them. She managed to get her face in front of Richard's, awaiting his answer. "Ricky…"

Richard envisioned himself squeezing her hand until he realized that he was actually doing it; _feeling_ himself doing it. "I – I pr-omise."

Adrian brushed her hard, slippery lips against Richard's. She couldn't quite feel the kiss at first, but soon the ice around their mouths began to melt into water and she could taste his lips. "You – you won't l-let g-o of th-at promise." It wasn't a question, it was a demand. "Never," she said. "I – I tr-ust you." And then she let her head collapse against the board.

Richard listened to the water slosh around them. All he could do was stare into her eyes as she stared back. He realized it had taken so much of her energy to talk to him, to move and make him talk back to him, to_ kiss _him. He fumbled, pulling the hand he held to his lips and pressing them to the backs of her fingers.

_Grace, Mom, Adrian._

_Grace, Mom, Adrian._

_Grace, Mom, Adrian._

He recited them inside his head ad infinitum. The constantly rolling thoughts gave him something to focus on besides the coldness and the numbness. Eventually his head rolled back and he found himself staring at the starry night. He forced his brain to send the right signals to his hand, the one that wasn't holding Adrian's, and he began to drum his fingers against the ice. He wondered if Adrian could hear it: "Come Josephine in my Flying Machine," the same song she'd recognized him drumming with his hands on the railing of the boat. He could barely hear it himself though, so he didn't hold out much hope.

Richard was still drumming his fingers – though it had morphed into more of a pat – when something tickled the corner of his eye. It looked like something yellow and bright. He was beginning to think he had hallucinated it when he passed again. He twisted his head and eyes, looking just above Adrian's head. In the distance, a blurry shape caught his attention: a boat behind a light. There was noise coming from the fuzzy silhouette, but he couldn't hear what it was.

"A – a –" He swished his cold, frozen tongue around in his mouth until it warmed up ever so slightly. It still felt fat, but he tried again anyway. "Adrian!" Richard attempted to roll over, but bits of his hair and clothing were frozen to the wood. It was only then that he realized the life belt was around him and not her. But there was no time to scold her. "Ad –rian!" The sighting of the boat had given him an infusion of adrenaline and he used it to shake the hand that he held, only to find that their entwined hands were firmly stuck to the wood. "A-Adrian!"

The light washed across his face again and he winced back from it. "Th – th-ere's a b-boat, Adrian!" The handcuffs rattled as he shook her. The sound reminded him of a play he'd seen once, of Jacob Marley in _A Christmas Carol_. They sounded like death. His heart jumped in his frozen chest. _"Adrian!"_ He felt something crack inside his throat and when he tried to say her name again, he realized his voice was horse and nearly gone completely. His eyes began to sting as hot tears welled against the ice in the corners of his eyes. Looking again, he saw the boat disappearing further and further into the distance. The light was no longer passing over him anymore. "A…dri…an…" he choked desperately.

Richard laid his head back down, the tip of his nose touching Adrian's. He remembered the darkness back on the boat, when he realized there was no help to uncuff her, and how he had been willing to go back and die with her right then and there. He felt that same conviction welling in his heart again and he settled in, rubbing her frozen hand as he waited to join her where ever she was.

_Adrian._

_Mom._

_Grace._

Looking at her hand, he thought of the promise he told her he wouldn't let go of. He thought about his mother, all alone in New York. Until and unless his father – had the man managed to survive as well – did. And Grace, alone and expecting Adrian, Jason, and himself, two of whom would never come. His heart stilled as he opened his eyes again. "C-come back." The light was just a flicker in the dark now. "St-op. S-s-s-top. Co – me b-back!"

With no way to get their attention – and the window of time on keeping his promise shutting quickly – he began to look around. His eyes settled on the crewman who had been blowing his whistle when they'd gotten onto the door. He was still there, whistle still stuck between his black lips. Richard looked between him and Adrian before pressing his free hand to her wrist and plying her hand away from his. He held onto her wrists as he pushed himself off the edge of the board and into the water. The cold was murderous!

"I – I'm hol-holding on," he said, teeth chattering and clinking together so hard he thought they might break in his mouth. Richard pressed a final kiss to Adrian's frozen lips and then released her wrists, watching as she deftly disappeared into the darkness of the Atlantic. Then he began to kick as she'd told him to do before, all the way to the crewman. As soon as the whistle was in his mouth he began to blow on it until he thought his lungs might give out.

"Turn the boat around!"

The last thing he remembered of that dark night was being hauled by two crewman into the life boat with a handful of other people around him, all of which began to cover him in heavy wool blankets. As soon as his eyes closed, his mind sunk away into the abyss.


	14. Chapter Thirteen

**A/N: **This is actually a very short chapter and I apologize for that. I'm also about 99.9% positive that there will only be two chapters left after this one. Chapter Fourteen and an Epilogue. I think I'm quite pleased with the way they turned out, too, so I can't wait to see what you think! And without further ado…

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Thirteen**

The next time Richard opened his eyes, it was to ripe yellow sunlight. He found himself wrapped in a plaid blanket as the boat he was in neared a much larger ship. For a fuzzy blip, he thought it was Titanic and that, just maybe, everything had been a horrible nightmare. But then he saw the words along the ship's side: _Carpathia_.

He sat up. He was still cold, but no longer shivering and the numbness had been replaced by pain. Physical, naturally, but the more damning was the pain in his heart. The events of hours before – or at least, he assumed hours – replayed against his mind's eye. Jason and Adrian. The blackness that Adrian had disappeared into.

"Sir, we're ready to board."

Richard sat up, realizing that one of the crewman was speaking to him. His head swirled and the man caught him, holding him upright. He couldn't find words to thank the man, but he seemed to understand anyway, and helped Richard to step into another life boat. This one was connected to ropes. Instead of going down, they went up, carrying him to the top of the Carpathia and allowing two Carpathia crewman in to help him onto the deck of the ship itself.

A couple of women dressed in long black dresses, starched white aprons, black capelets, and white hands were there to take away his wet blanket and wrap him in two more dry ones. One of the women guided him over to a bench and sat him down, handing him a bowl of steaming broth.

"Drink up, Sir." Her accent was thick and Welsh. "Let one of us know if you need anything else."

Richard held the soup below his face, absorbing the steam into his pores. The chicken smell began to waft into his nostrils and his stomach growled accordingly. He spooned some to his lips but when the hot liquid touched his teeth he dropped the spoon back into the bowl and ran his tongue along his teeth to sooth them. After the shock had subsided, he began to blow along the golden broth until he didn't see anymore steam and risked tasting the soup again. The more he slurped, the hungrier he realized he was. He felt like a wild animal the way he was attacking the spoon. It certainly wouldn't have been an acceptable way to eat at a first class dining table.

But then again, that was all gone. He'd never be in first class again. He never _wanted_ to be. Whether or not Zoe and his father had made it onto the Carpathia entered his mind. He looked up but all the faces looked the same. Richard decided to finish his soup before he let himself worry anymore and ended up cleaning the bowl out entirely. He even licked it, which he knew was far from couth. Then he set it aside and stood up. He didn't see the woman who had given him the soup and the others dressed similarly were all busy.

Richard began to wander. His eyes roamed the occupants. Many were crying, some were huddled together, others prayed, and then there were those like himself who sat alone, staring off into the distance at nothing and everything. His journey took him inside the ship where he found most of the first class passengers had congregated so he steered out and fumbled down a few flights of stairs on the outside decks until he saw people in clothes that resembled Adrian's. As he stepped off the last of a flight of stairs, a crewman passed him.

"Sir," the man said, his accent English. "I don' think you'll find any of your people down 'ere. It's all steerage."

Richard winced at the term _steerage_ and shook the man off, moving into the crowd. There were considerably less numbers than there had been inside. He could hear many different conversations going on around him, most in languages he didn't recognize. He even passed one woman who was struggling to communicate with an officer. From what he could make of her broken English, she was searching for her husband, and she couldn't accept the fact that all of the twenty life boats had already unloaded.

He spent the entire day searching the upper and lower decks for Grace, but he'd come up dry every time. The false leads – the back of the blonde heads that he had thought might be her – were the most draining on him, and by dinner, his heart had sunk when he finally came to terms with the fact that he'd let Jason and Adrian down. He wondered what had happened to her: had she jumped off the boat too? Had the cold gotten to her before the boat had gotten to the Carpathia?

With yet another death on his conscious, Richard resigned himself to lonesome corners. He drained that evening's soup and fell asleep on a pile of itchy wool. He dreamed of fresh lacquer, ocean air, sparkling lights, and rushing water. He dreamed of death. He _didn't_ dream of Adrian. When he awoke the next morning, he made several more rounds of the ship, hoping against the odds that maybe he would find Grace, but alas, _nothing_.

By April 18, 2012, two days later, the rain was coming down in sheets. All around him people held umbrellas above their heads, but Richard was content to stand on the deck and hold his head back as the rain lashed against him. The Statue of Liberty loomed above him and it almost seemed as if she was mocking him.

"Sir, would you like an umbrella?"

Richard turned suddenly and nearly choked.

"_Richard?"_

"Grace!" Throwing caution to the wind, he threw his arms around her. "Wh – I've been looking everywhere for you for two days!"

Grace flushed. "I've been volunteering! Feeding people, fetching blankets," she shook her hand which held the umbrella, "getting umbrellas! Oh my God, Richard!" Tears flooded her eyes as she held her own umbrella over Richard's head and hugged his neck. "Thank God you're alive! Where're Jason and Adrian?"

Richard went ridged in her arms. As she slowly pulled away, he saw the grim in her silver orbs. "I – I'm so sorry…"

Grace shook her head. "No. _No…_"

"I – we – did everything we could…but it wasn't enough." Richard closed his eyes. The sound of Grace's sobs drowning in the rain made him want to sink to the floor. "She saved my life."

Grace moved close to Richard, keeping the umbrella above both of their heads. She hugged him suddenly, surprising him. "She saved mine too."

Richard wrapped his arm around Grace, holding her close to his side as the rain pelted her umbrella.

"Can you believe it?" Grace whispered.

"Believe what?"

She motioned her hand to the mammoth statue. "It's brilliant. I – I always thought the first time I'd see it though, it would he with Adrian at my side."

"I'm sorry."

Grace shook her head. "It's not your fault. When I couldn't find you – any of you – I _knew_. I put everything I had into helping others just to get me through. I suppose finding you here, at this moment, was just part of God's plan. I'm not sure what to make of it yet, but I suppose He has something else in store for us."

Richard was silent. He wasn't sure about plans or any kind of grand design, but what he did know was that he still had a promise to keep, and he would hold onto it for as long as he lived.

The Carpathia docked in New York that night, but it wasn't until morning that Grace and Richard found themselves able to finally leave the media frenzied dock. However, before they could slip off into the shadows – and into their new lives – a single reporter caught Grace by the arm. "Excuse me, Miss, but I was wondering if I might get a picture for the paper?"

Grace wavered. "Oh, I don't know-"

"You were pointed out to me," he insisted. "They said you were a volunteer. I'm writing an article on the heroic actions of the volunteers in the aftermath of the Titanic's sinking."

"I promise I'm not that heroic, I was just doing what anyone would do," Grace argued bashfully.

"Please, Miss. Just one photograph."

Grace sighed heavily. "All right. I suppose, if it means that much to you."

Richard stood protectively by Grace's side, not about to let her out of his sight again, even in spite of the offense of the camera. He'd never liked them.

Minutes later, when he'd gotten what he'd needed, the reporter smiled. "Just one more thing: may I get your name, Miss?"

"Grace Bowman."

The reporter noted her name and the spelling and then turned expectantly towards Richard. "And you, Sir?"

Richard glanced over his shoulder, staring at the Statue of Liberty against the distant sunrise. He turned back with a solemn expression. "Lee," he said finally. "Ricky Lee."


	15. Chapter Fourteen

**A/N: **All right, everyone. This is the last chapter before the Epilogue. I may not post the epilogue right away. Not that I don't want to, but because I've been planning a large undertaking of a project for some time now and I'm not ready to complete it. Shoot me a PM if you're really interested. But, if this doesn't get an update quickly, please do not assume I've forgotten about it, because I promise I haven't. (Also, let me know if there's any confusion about the character relations in this chapter. I put a lot of time into making sure it all made sense, but if it's still confusing, just leave a review asking me to explain and I will be more than happy to.)

_**The Secret Life Of The Titanic**_

**Chapter Fourteen**

"Mr. Lee?"

Ricky shook from his stupor and realized that he was standing in the front doorway of his home holding a yellowed, laminated newspaper clipping with a photograph depicting himself and Grace and a tiny caption beneath it, noting him by his assumed name. "Yes, yes," he coughed. "I'm sorry, sometimes I zone out these days."

"So that _is_ you in the photograph then?" The man standing on his porch stoop asked for clarification.

"Yes."

The man – a tall, skinny fellow with shaggy brown sugar hair – produced something else from the bag slung over his shoulder and held it out to Ricky. "And these?"

They were photographs: one black-and-white and the other color. They were in a frame, side-by-side, behind a simple sheet of glass. The color photograph had been taken at the first big name concert he had ever performed at; it had been the first time _Ricky Lee_ and _professional musician_ had ever been in the same sentence. "That's me," he said, tapping the color photo.

"And this one?" the young man persisted.

Ricky grunted and huffed. "Where did you get this photo?"

"They were in my great grandfather's possessions when he passed away. It belonged to my great great grandfather." The man folded his arms. "You might've known him: Leo Boykewich?"

Ricky's hand shook and he nearly dropped the frame. "Wh – what did you say your name was, son?"

The young man offered his hand. "Ben."

"Ben _Boykewich_?"

"Benjamin Boykewich III, actually, but yes. I was named after my father and he was named after his grandfather."

"I thought you said you were a reporter?"

"I am. _Well_…a reporter of history, that is. I'm a filmmaker, to be specific. I make documentaries and right now I'm trying to make a documentary on the Titanic."

Ricky tapped his cane against the hardwood floor and shook his head. "Well, that was a very long time ago and I'm a very old man," he said, grabbing to close the door. "I'm sorry, but you'll have to find someone else."

Ben wedged his foot into the doorway. "But that_ is_ you in all three photographs, isn't it? You are Ricky Lee _and_ Richard Underwood, are you not?"

"I'm not Richard Underwood," Ricky grumbled. He began to jab at Ben's shoe with his cane. "Now if you could kindly move your big foot out of my way –"

"What's going on here? Grandpa, are you all right? Who are _you?_"

Ricky pulled the door back open again and saw a young woman – long raven hair and enchanting olive skin – jogging up the cement walkway that went down the center of the lawn leading up to the stoop.

"Are you harassing my grandfather? You need to get off our property this instant! You should be ashamed –"

"It's all right, Adrian. He was just leaving," Ricky said, looking pointedly towards Ben.

"Who was just leaving?"

Ricky grumbled again and finally wedged himself onto the stoop between Ben and Adrian. "Nobody, Grace."

"Oh now Ricky," Grace chastised, puttering up the walkway. Long white blonde hair swished around her sloping shoulders. "Don't be such a brute." She shuffled up to the stoop and offered Ben a dainty little hand. "Now who are you, dear?"

"Ben Boykewich," the young man smiled, shaking her hand. "And I'm sorry, but did I hear correctly: your name is Grace? As in, Grace _Bowman_?"

Grace chortled. "I haven't been Grace Bowman in a very long time," she smiled. "But yes, that was me in a past life."

Ben looked between Grace and Ricky. "I'm sorry," he frowned confusedly, "but are you two…" He motioned his finger between them.

"Oh! Heavens no!" Grace chuckled. "Ricky's just my friend. We've been friends for a very long time, haven't we, Ricky?"

Ricky crossed his arms. "Long enough to know what you're about to do and I'm not having it!"

Grace raised a scolding finger. "Hush, you! Clementine would be positively ashamed of your manners!"

"Clementine," Ben repeated. "As in, your wife?"

"Late wife," Ricky grumbled.

Grace pressed her finger to her lips. "You seem to know quite a lot about us," she observed, "yet we know nothing about you."

"I know he's a nuisance!"

"Why don't you come in?" Grace offered, waving her hand. "I'll make us all some sweet ice tea."

"_Grace!"_

"What?" she asked saccharinely.

Ricky stiffened. "He's here wanting to make a documentary…which is why he's asking about the Titanic."

Adrian looked at her grandfather with a blank expression. "The Titanic?" She turned to Ben. "Why would you be asking my grandfather about the Titanic?"

Grace smiled thoughtfully and reached over to pat Adrian's arm. "Now_ that_ is going to take a little more than just tea."

Ten minutes later Adrian rose to her feet as Grace came in from the kitchen, balancing a tray of cookies and a pitcher of ice tea in her hands. "Grandma, let me help you with those."

"Nonsense, dear, I've got it," Grace said stubbornly. She shuffled to the table and set down the treats and then took a seat beside Ricky, across from Ben. "Help yourself."

"That's very kind of you Mrs…"

"Vasquez. But please, call me Grace. My husband has passed on now anyway, so the 'Mrs.' doesn't really even apply anymore."

Ben plucked a snickerdoodle off the plate and nibbled at the edge. He eyed Adrian carefully. "Then I assume the aforementioned Clementine and Mr. Vasquez are your other grandparents?"

"You shouldn't assume, Mr. Boykewich. But in this case, yes, you assume correctly. Sadly, they're both gone now – my grandfather of cancer just last year and I never knew my grandmother – but I still have two wonderful grandparents right here that I'm eternally grateful for. But what does this have to do with anything?"

"I'm just trying to keep track," Ben replied. "So you're the descendant of two Titanic survivors?"

"I think you have the wrong people."

"No, I think I have exactly the right ones. And lucky for me, I've killed two birds with one stone." Ben pushed the article across the table to Adrian, which he had first shown Ricky when he'd arrived at the front door.

After analyzing it for a moment, Adrian whipped her head between her grandparents. "But – why would you keep this a secret from me?"

Ricky reached across the table to lay his hand on Adrian's. "You've learned about the Titanic in school, Adrian. But history is very different than reality. It's…an understatement to say it's a painful thing to talk about. Your Grandfather Antonio only knew a little…that your grandmother had survived the sinking and that she lost her best friend that day. I never even told Grandma Clementine."

"And Antonio – the good man that he was – never pried. He understood that a person's heart is a vast ocean of secrets."

"So how did you track my grandfather down in the first place?" Adrian asked Ben.

"By accident, really. Film and history have always been my passions. I wanted to do a documentary of the Titanic ever since I was a young boy. Inspired, I suppose, by listening to the way Great Grandpa Ben used to talk about his father when I was just a kid. So I began to do the research and one of the first things I uncovered was this newspaper clipping from the day after the sinking."

Ricky reached for the laminated clipping and studied it, remembering the day vividly; how he hadn't even wanted to be in that photograph and wouldn't have been, had the reporter not talked Grace into it. He looked towards his old friend and pushed the picture to her.

"A few months later Great Grandpa Ben passed away and as I was going through his possessions, I came across this photo." Ben pushed Adrian the black-and-white photograph of her grandfather. "I kept thinking I'd seen him somewhere before and it nagged at me for a few more months until I was going over my notes one night and spotted that clipping again and realized…it was the same man! This one called him 'Ricky Lee' and the other, which was tied up with a wedding invitation, called him 'Richard Underwood.' I knew it was too good to be a coincidence –"

"So you started researching it and connected the name to my grandfather the musician," Adrian supplied, tapping the third and final photograph.

"You'd be surprised how easy tracking someone down can be with the right connections and technology."

Ricky sighed, staring at the old black-and-white picture. "Just so you know: I liked your great great grandfather a great deal more than I like you. He was a good man."

Grace reached across the table to touch Ricky's hand.

"He gave me the life vest that was instrumental in saving my life."

Grace narrowed a pair of concerned eyes at her friend. "Are you sure you want to talk about this, Ricky?"

"I don't have a lot of time left to talk about it."

"Grandpa-"

"_Shhh."_ Ricky tapped Adrian's hand. "You were named after her."

Adrian cocked her head to the side. "My mother?"

"No. Your grandmother's best friend. The first woman I ever loved; the woman I gave my heart to and never let go of. Her name was Adrian. Adrian Lee. Your mother was named after her and you, after your mother."

"A-Adrian _Lee_?" Adrian stuttered.

"Yes. She didn't make it, but she saved my life. She saved me in every way that a person can be saved. I've never spoken to anyone besides Grace about her since. And afterwards, I took her name in honor of the new life she had given me and tried to never look back." Ricky turned to Ben. "I guess it's an ironic turn of events that my son and Grace's daughter grew up, fell in love, and gave their daughter exactly _that_ name."

"Not that ironic," Grace smiled sadly. "Part of God's plan, I say."

Ben retrieved a small recorder from his bag and set it on the table beside the tray of cookies. "Would you mind telling me about her?" he asked softly.

Ricky looked down the table and Grace who nodded. He piled his hands onto the table and leaned forward, letting out a long breath. "I don't know where to start."

"Start with your first memory of April tenth, nineteen-twelve."


End file.
